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Stories
3/22/2012 We went to Frederik Meijer gardens today. It was our way to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. We had a lot of fun and ended up buying the membership. If we go twice we got the money out of it, so not a bad deal. There is so much to do at Frederik Meijer garden. Right now they have the butterfly exhibit, which the kids absolutely love and the children's garden. They have the great lakes for the kids where they can play with boats. It's supposed to teach them about the great lakes, but it just so much fun to play with water. There is the tree house and the log cabin. There is a sandbox, and sculptures. We were there for nearly three hours and the kids didn't want to leave. I put up the pictures.
3/21/2012 Uploaded a bunch of pictures. Sorry if they are not perfect. These days it's hard to do with three kids wanting attention. Hope you enjoy them.
3/18/2012 The time is moving slow, oh so slow. I guess that always happens when you are waiting for something exciting. Only 128 days to go. Can't wait. Things are going a lot better now that the weather has changed. The kids are outside constantly and luckily we have an apartment that is well suited to them being outside without constant supervision. The balcony is now also a favorite although we are still working on the not 'accidently" dropping toys. First day I let Alyssa out on the balcony she stuck her head between the railing and of course her big nuggin got stuck. It took Dan and me both pulling on the railing to get her out while of course a very scared, angry and ticked off child was screaming at the top of her lungs. We are dealing with some vocal issues with Alyssa. Unfortunately she seems to think that whenever she needs something or is upset or tired she needs to yell and scream at the top of her lungs. There has been a day I put earplugs in my ear just so that my head wouldn't explode. So we are working diligently on nice voices and we try to correct her with sweet sing songy voices, which let me tell you isn't always easy when she screams and screams for something. She is very smart though and we firmly believe that as always this is just a phase that hopefully she will pass SOON.
Ryan is doing better in school. Some of you who follow facebook know that Ryan learned about leprechauns at school. They are going to catch one come Monday and so a elaborate story was fabricated about leprechauns. A person has to wear green to ward off the leprechauns. That way they won't bite. Of course Ryan decided to tell this brilliant story to Kaylee whose vivid imagination ran overtime when it was time for bed and as a consequence couldn't sleep. Dan decided to build a leprechaun ward -a piece of left-over green card board from Christmas- which he taped to the door. The ward only held until about midnight when she got up and continued to keep Dan awake for a few hours. After being properly assured that no leprechauns were going to get her, she went back to bed. My question remains; do we really need another imaginary figure? We have the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and now a Leprechaun? It's overkill in my opinion, but just going with the flow anyway.
Ryan got new glasses a few weeks ago. There was a little drama when we picked up his glasses. He didn't want to wear them at all, thought they were ugly. I assured him up and down that they look good on him (which they do). Dan also assured him, but Ryan wasn't fully satisfied until he took them to school and his teachers and friends told him the exact same thing. He's happy now and he is never without them.
Kaylee is my little buddy, but she's having a hard time. She desperately wants to go to school. So our countdown to Florida is for her also a countdown to school (ten days shy). I keep telling her about Florida. It will be an exciting time. Not only are we moving to Florida, she will go to school, but she is also going to turn five. Needless to say, she wishes it was 128 days later. So do I. Her behavior leaves a little bit to be desired right now, not sure if it's spring fever. There for I have instituted seperate bedtimes. Ryan stays up a half hour later then her, that way she can fall asleep on her own. So far (three days) so good.
In the mean time, winter seems to have past and we have rolled into full blown Summer with 80+ degrees temperatures. Wasn't quite expecting that and Alyssa had no 24 months clothes to wear. I guess Kaylee went straight from 24 months winter clothes to 3t Summer clothes. So a trip to the store to buy Alyssa some clothes was in order. I bought her some cute outfits that I'm sure you will see featured on many upcoming pictures.
We also went to the ZOO this week. Not all the animals are back from vacation. Bill the alligator is still in Florida, so were the Flamingo's. Many other animals were also still vacationing at various other locations. They are doing some major reconstruction at the ZOO. They are building a funicular, new gift shops, some new habitats and a new entrance. In other words we got through the ZOO pretty quickly. Of course we weren't out of the ZOO for five minutes when Ryan and Kaylee started talking about the bathroom and of course since they are under construction inside the ZOO there was no point in going back. The park in front of the ZOO has two buildings that have bathrooms and I naturally chose the building with the bathrooms that were closed. I made a mad dash with Kaylee on my arm and Ryan running behind me to the other building to find that just the women's bathroom was open. I breathed a sigh of relief, because having them go in the bushes was not an option at such a busy place. Ryan proceeded to leave the bathroom without telling me and I had to run after him while Kaylee was still in the bathroom. Let me tell you I certainly got a workout that day and of course it was our first 80+ degrees day. Alyssa had a blast. Although she has been to the ZOO before this is the first time she really is old enough to interact and understand what the animals are all about. She loved the penguins the most in my opinion.
At the end of this month we are going to Niagara Falls for a long 'weekend'. After that we think the time to Florida will go immensely fast because it will be time to prepare, pack. What are we bringing, what can wait till the moving truck comes. We're a little nervous, lots to do, lots of unknowns.
Right now life is good and we're enjoying the early summer.
2/25/2012 My dad is turning 80 today. What an achievement. Very sorry that we can't be with him today to celebrate. We're trying to set up a remote video conferencing so we can talk to Opa and Oma once in a while and actually see them.
Ryan had to go to the eye doctor this week and got new glasses. I guess his head really grew, because his glasses are too small for his head. I don't know anything about glasses so I had no idea, but after seeing his new pair on him his old pair is definitely too small. I have to admit that I have started to dislike his current pair and it's probably because it doesn't really fit him anymore. He's getting his new frame this week. His prescription was increased again. Double from last time. It is so strange to me because he seems to be able to see everything and then when they test him I am baffled at how little he can see. I can't imagine going through life thinking that half your vision is what life looks like. Ryan jokingly told me when he had his glasses off that I was all blurry. I told him that he thinks he sees me well with his current glasses, but when he gets his new glasses I will be even clearer to him. He thought that was pretty cool. He gets so tired from those drops in his eyes that by the time he had to pick out his new frame he was almost asleep and I had to carry him to the car because he was sleeping.
Kaylee gets jealous when Ryan gets new glasses so she kept saying how she needed to have her eyes checked. I think she feels like Ryan gets everything: school, glasses, best friend, etc... and she gets nothing. I keep telling her that next year she gets to do all those things.
Kaylee is so much further at four then Ryan was. She knows all her letters; knows the sounds to the letters; can read some words; knows all her numbers up to fifty and some higher; and knows her shapes; knows her colors. I think she will be super happy when she can go to school.
Dan and I can't wait to move. We are definitely the impatient kind. The next five months seem like they will crawl by. Truth is that starting April time will probably all of a sudden go really fast. We'll have to start packing slowly but surely starting June. I'm excited to find out what school the kids are going to be in. Once I know that I'll start buying summer clothes. I'm still dreaming about having a laundry room and I'll be happy when the kids have their own rooms again and when they go play outside whenever they want.
I'll personally be really happy not to have to drive the kids to school. Or even if I had to that I don't have to carry a baby down the stairs. Alyssa is dangerous on the stairs. She just throws herself off the stairs. I have tried to teach her to go slow, but it's not working so far. I think she sees Ryan and Kaylee bounding down the stairs and she wants to do the same thing. Alyssa is learning really quickly as well. She still has some of those annoying baby/toddler habits like touching EVERYTHING and opening and closing ALL the drawers and cabinets. Now she can climb up the chairs in the dining room so you can't leave anything on the table or she'll come and happily bring it to you. She is now tall enough to reach her little hands on the counter. I came out of the bathroom to find her walking around with a giant meat cleaver that was on the counter. It's the curse of tall children. She hasn't figured out the doorknobs yet, but it's only a matter of time. I foudn out how tall she really is when we went to Kaylee's last day of Gymnastics. The entire family is invited to come. Some of the girls in the class that are four are only just a little bigger then Alyssa. Unbelievable.
2/5/2012 I'm feeling really accomplished today. Not only is the house clean, the laundry done, I have managed to get the kids (Ryan and Kaylee that is) in bed and asleep within five minutes after leaving their room. I got so sick and tired of our bedtime routine. It is always noisy and it's hard to settle the kids down, especially Kaylee. So yesterday I jumped online and did some research and decided to buy this cd Indigo Dreams: Relaxation and Stress Management Bedtime Stories for Children, Improve Sleep, Manage Stress and Anxiety (Indigo Dreams). I am expecting it on Tuesday. It tells four different stories and teaches kids breathing techniques, which calms them down. It got great customer reviews. Well, because of this CD I decided to get a head start and tuck the kids in, turn off the lights, crawl in bed with Kaylee, rub her tummy and make up a story of my own that I told at a very slow and restful pace. They were crazy about it. They didn't so much as utter a sound the whole story. Then I said goodnight, left the bedroom. They were asleep five minutes later. No, 'I have to go to the bathroom's', no 'I need a drink', no talking, no arguing, no 'I'm hungry', no staying awake for at least half an hour or longer. Just peaceful, stressfree bedtime. It is amazing what a difference it makes in my stress level. I hope the cd will work the same way. Tomorrow they already want another story made up with a princess and a prince. I'm sure I can't take all the credit. The kids, and yes this time that does include Alyssa, have been playing outside like mad. Yesterday they went three times. Today Ryan and Kaylee were outside all afternoon. Alyssa still takes naps so she wasn't able to go that long. The weather is just so beautiful outside. It feels like it's spring. My favorite time of year, along with Fall.
Alyssa loves to play outside. When she sees Ryan and Kaylee get ready, she gets her shoes and coat and brings them to me. Of course I can't resist her beautiful little face and so we venture outside. It's been a lot of fun. Alyssa discovered snow and sand and shovels and leaves and so many things that she didn't get a chance to see yet. She likes to go for walks around the building and we all go with her. She still falls frequently and boy does she dislike having dirty hands. So much so that she won't even get up when she falls. She just waits and looks at me. If I don't show up in time she says "help".
The weather everywhere seems crazy. In Europe they have one of the coldest winters on history. In the Netherlands they are ice skating and sledding and making snowman. They can keep it as far as I'm concerned. Not missing it one bit.
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1/26/12 Florida is getting closer every step. We have now booked our tickets. Ryan, Kaylee, Alyssa and I are leaving Michigan on July 24th. I only just realized that it is our anniversary that we're leaving on. It makes me a little sad, because we won't see Dan for nearly a month and a half. I jokingly told him that after a month and a half of peace and quiet he won't want to come to Florida anymore. He'll just love the quiet life and stay in Michigan. Dan's move date is not firm. It can be as late as the end of September, but we're hoping for the beginning of September. He'll drive himself and Rogue to Florida. We're also getting moving van estimates and auto transport estimates, which makes the whole move seem more real and a lot closer. The kids and I have made a countdown calendar and the kids get to tear of a number every day.Temps in Florida are now 70 degrees (extended forecast close to the 80s). It isn't bad here at 34 degrees (it's warmer than it ought to be this time of year), but 70 degrees sounds about perfect to me.I'm pretty sure the only thing I'm going to miss from Michigan is my friends and the trees. One last thing we're doing before we leave is go to Niagra Falls. Been here 16 years and never made it to Canada. It's just a short weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Video's
1/15/2012 We had a long weekend. Thursday night it started snowing and we had 3-5 inches and than another inch or two during the rest of the weekend. In any case it caused Ryan's school to be shut down for the day. I really didn't mind. I'm not a morning person as it is and having to get three kids ready so I can drop Ryan of at school is always a challenge for me. If I had known I was going to quit my job I would have signed him up for PM school instead of AM. That way I could have been more awake driving Ryan to school. But it's only for a few more months. Five actually, or less really, since school ends June 4th. Here are some updates on the kids.
Ryan:
He's had some trouble at school since Christmas. Just before Christmas vacation he stayed in green for a while. I think it was two or even three weeks in a row. Not sure. After Christmas it has been nothing but yellow and red. The other day he came home and he told me his teacher said that if he got to red one more time he was going to have to go to the principals office. It had been really hard for Dan and me to get Ryan to tell us exactly why he was getting into trouble. He would tell us: "I sat on a bear," or "I wrote the letter M wrong," or something like that. You know what he's saying has something to do with it, but we weren't sure what it was. So after Ryan came home telling me about the principle I contacted his teacher and told her that we were having a hard time getting the exact story out of Ryan. Well, she told us and it wasn't pretty. He was running in the halls, yelling, sitting on a bear (Yes :)), sitting under his table. Just really crazy behavior. I was so angry with Ryan. I didn't show him, but Dan and I sat him down and told him in no uncertain terms that it was just unacceptable behavior and I also said we were disappointed because he knows better than to behave in such a manner. We told him to apologize to his teacher and that if he got into red again he would spend most of the afternoon in his bedroom playing by himself and to emphasize that we meant it that afternoon he spent two hours in his bedroom. Next day he stayed in green, apologized to the teacher and just was mr perfect. Of course next day was a snow day. He's been really great otherwise. We decided to let him compete for his yellow belt since he really wanted to and he got it, barely. He got some of the form a little messed up. So this year he's back in the same class. He's the teacher's helper pretty much. It makes Ryan very proud. Now that we have tightened the rules considerably I see my Ryan back again. It's amazing how kids can get when you give them a little leeway. We are playing all the boardgames we got for Christmas and read books again and today we played outside in the snow. It has been a really great time. In a sense I'm glad Christmas is over with.
Kaylee:
She has also been in a mood and a half since Christmas. Now that we're back into schedule it seems to help a lot. Kaylee loves to play boardgames. Sometimes she and Ryan are playing boardgames together. It's too cute to hear them. Ryan and Kaylee are both boardgame happy. We played over twelve games the other day. Yeah, we have a lot of them. It's fun. Next week I will also start bringing her to the library again and start doing our preschool activities. She really amazes me how fast she learns things. She is very close in development with Ryan. It helps that Ryan loves to show her how to do the things he just learned. So she can read some of his popcorn words and she knows how to spell. Although she loves boardgames, I still think her favorite is reading and also doing puzzles. She is into telling stories now or in narrating things that just happened or even while we were in the white house (the kids refer to our house as teh white house).
Alyssa:
Alyssa never seizes to amaze me. She is so smart and so good. At this point she really understands important things. If before bed she is still hungry she uses her sign and her bastardized version of the word hungry or eat. Or she'll ask for her bo' (bottle). When you ask her if she wants to go take a nap or go to sleep at night and the answer is yes, she'll walk to her bedroom so you can lift her into her bed. No crying involved no whining, or difficulty, like I had with one of my other daughters. :). She still goes to bed a little after six and wakes up at about eight. She still takes two naps a day as well. She is just perfect. Well, until she walks around and opens every cupboard in the kitchen or up ends the dog water bowl for the umpteenth time, because I forgot to put it on the counter. Sigh... She is a little darling though. Today she verbally asked for more food instead of signing. She is actually also starting to understand things like "in", "out", "up", "down", "on", "off". It's one of my favorite times in seeing children grow up because they go for a few weeks at the same pace and then it's almost like you can see the lightbulb light up and they have all these things they have achieved. It's fun. Alyssa eats everything along with us. She's not afraid to tell us what she wants and when we don't get it, she goes and finds it herself (food mostly). So we really need to keep an eye on her now. She just went for her 15 month well visit. She is high up there in the percentiles. Still not surprised about that. She is 32inches and weighs 26.5 pounds. She got her last shots until she's four years old. Woohoo. We just upgraded her to a booster, because I she really didn't fit in her carseat anymore. It was getting really frustrating to strap her in and Alyssa was starting to object as well. Her favorite thing to do is dance. Any music she hears she'll start dancing to.
Dan and Lisa:
We're doing good. Actually we're starting to get impatient about moving. We are all of a sudden starting to do a lot of things for the preparation of moving to Florida and we can almost taste it. Yet we still have six months 1 week and two days to go, but who's counting right :D? There are some things in the apartment we are getting frustrated with. My main point is the kitchen and not having a washer and dryer. Having to go to the laundromat to do laundry is a pain in the tuchus and there just isn't enough counterspace. In all reality if we knew we were staying here longterm we could make it work (except for the laundry part), but we would have to get rid of some stuff. Stuff we don't want to get rid of now because we're afraid we have use for it in the new house. The rest of the apartment is really great. There is very little disturbance from neighbors. We've had some weird stuff happening with noise, but it is an apartment, but for the most part it's a great place. Today we played in the snow in our "back yard". We made a snow man in the woods. Okay, he looks kind of pathetic, but what the hay. I'm taking a pic tomorrow just in case it starts warming up again and the thing disappears. Just quick checked the forecast and yes tomorrow it's 38 and I saw warmer temps at the end of the month. No weather is as crazy as Michigan's. So far though it's been a wonderful farewell winter from Michigan. This morning the plows ran through the parkinglot and someone cleared the walkway and from our lovely dining room Dan said: "There honey, I'm all done shoveling." I can now remember why I used to love the snow so much. It was when I lived in an apartment and snow was mostly fun, not work :). All in all things are going really well for us and we just feel so blessed that we can do this venture, that I'm not working and can keep the kids home. It's just something we have worked for so long and now to finally see it all coming together is just hard to believe sometimes. Moving doesn't even seem all that daunting this time, because we'll have professionals hauling the stuff out and putting it back in. All I have to do is pack and unpack. Unpacking is the fun part.
1/7/2012 My first 2012 post. We had a lot of fun with Dan's parents and grandmother here. Dan's grandmother didn't feel too well unfortunately and by the end of their visit Dan's mom caught what she had. Unfortunately on their way out they drove on the first and so far only bad snowday and they took a long time to get where they needed to go. It's been a balmy 40 degrees for the most part.
So with Dan's parents having visited we are all set up to enroll them in school in Florida thanks to the help of Dan's mom. It would be super hard if we had to do it ourselves. It is only 6 and a 1/2 months before the kids and myself fly to Florida to start school. It seems like a long time, but I'm sure it'll go by fast. We are talking more and more to the kids about school and once we know which school they will go to I will start showing them pictures and stuff. They are starting to ask about their own bedrooms because they are keeping each other awake or waking each other up. All that means is that Kaylee keeps Ryan awake at night and Ryan wakes Kaylee up in the morning. Always complete opposites. The kids really love their Christmas gifts. Especially Kaylee seems to need some time to warm up to her gifts. She played with everything but her own presents the whole time, but now she is starting to play with her own stuff. Alyssa is also crazy about her new toys. Ryan is in love with his DS and we really needed to set some boundaries. He would play everyday all day if it was up to him.
It's been hard to get them back into their schedule, but very necessary. They have been overstimulated and super tired. Surprise right?
New Years was fun. We got them up at close to midnight, watched the ball drop and did some poppers and stars.
12/25/2011 Merry Christmas everyone! Having a good day so far, although we're not doing presents today. Dan is sleeping and he has to work two more days before he's off. Just in time for the Gparents to arrive. The kids kind of know it's Christmas today, but they know Santa told us he's not leaving presents till gma and gpa are here. We have decorated a gingerbread house today and they are super excited about that. I think we'll have to get out of the house soon though. Since Ryan's school vacation started we haven't been anywhere. I think they are getting a little claustrophobic? I should have anticipated it of course and have taken them out before Christmas, but it didn't even occur to me that this weekend is pretty much shot as far as going anywhere due to Christmas. Thank goodness we have the kinect. Since we're not celebrating till the 28th. Ryan's birthday went well. He kept saying he couldn't believe he's six now. He got a ton of Lego's.
11/25/2011 Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving. We kept it small scale because we don't have room to stash any leftovers. So we had yummy ham and green bean casserole and stuffing. Had some appetizers as well and of course pumpkin pie for desert. It was in a sense kind of an ironic day. For the third time this year we went through all the kids toys. Lots of toys are going. I think the biggest toys are Alyssa's toys simply because she is starting to grow out of them. She has so many toys too that it's hard for her to actually find one and play with them. At the same time we went to Meijer because they had sales and bought the kids a bunch of Christmas gifts because they went on sale. It seems a little counterproductive.  The kids had a lot of fun, because they got to browse the toys and really decide which toys they liked and which they didn't. I came back later and actually bought the toys they had picked that were on sale. It's funny how you can plan and pick things for the kids and than when you are ready to buy you end up with other things than you initially picked.Still have some things to buy, but we're getting closer to being done.
Oh on a funny note. We all gave thanks for things before dinner and they were the usual things like I'm thankful for; my mom, my dad, the house etc... Kaylee gave thanks for the cats... because they are already dead. Too funny. We quikly explained that that isn't really what you say thanks for.
We already decorated for Christmas. It isn't as elaborate as we usually do. We have a small Christmas tree inside and two bigger ones outside. It's fun the decorate the balcony. Kaylee and I also did a Christmas project and that is part of the decoration.
Now we're getting ready for Sinterklaas. I love this season.
Alyssa is loving life. She is currently teething. Poor kid has all the rest of her teeth coming in at once. The amazing part is that she doesn't whine or cry. Really the only time she whines or cries is when she is tired. She is going to be a talker. She is always babbling up a storm. Mostly unintelligble, but a lot of times she has the sounds correct. On top of the words she could already say she says Thank, Scooby (we have a singing Christmas Scooby, which is her absolute favorite), pretty, lights, ball, auwie, out, Alyssa, and some more words, bigger once that I can't think of. I don't know if anybody else could understand the words, but Dan picks up on it as well. So I know I'm not crazy... well, at least not about this.
Both Ryan and Kaylee have really been testing my patience for the past week and a half. So we've gotten a little stricter. It's like they do well and it's great and all of a sudden they fall off the wagon. All they need is a reminder of the rules and what we can and can't do. They have been much better the last two days because of it. Of course I haven't been feeling my best the past week and half and that was probably half the problem. We all have some sort of cold, but it isn't bad enough to be a full blown illness, but it's making all of us tired and we sneeze and just feel out of it. At first I thought we all had allergies, but allergy pills don't seem to do the trick. In all honesty it's more an annoyance than anything else.
The weather is gradually getting colder as expected. I look with anticipation at the temperatures in Florida and wish we could skip this winter altogether. Now that we know we are moving we're just ready to go and be done with it. Then again Dan got the kids lift tickets at Caberfae Peaks snow resort. They have supergreat deals for kids season passes. They are going with him, one at a time to go snowboarding. Very exciting. Hopefully there will be lots of snow there, just not here.
11/8/2011 Had Ryan's review yesterday at school. He's excelling. I'm not surprised, he is one of the oldest kids in the class. He's doing well. Last week he started getting in the red again at school. It means talking out of turn, yelling across the class (to help other kids), walking around without permission. We obviously couldn't promise chucke cheese's every five days, so we made his computer games conditional. Every three greens in a row he gets a game day after dinner. He didn't like it and begs us every day if he can please have his game days back, but we're not budging on this one. His teacher is really great, she is doing her part on her end and it's great. He's been in green for a week and he's super proud that he's in green. Ryan also got his outfit for Tae Kwon Do. We were going to let him compete, but figure that maybe next year Ryan and Dan can do Karate together. It would give them some Dad/Son time.
Ryan on moving to Florida: "but mama, I don't want to leave the planet."
Alyssa has finally decided she is ready to walk. She has been walking by the couches since ten months, but she just wouldn't walk on her own. I can say that this week marks the week that she finally has it down pat. Her favorite foods are shepherd's pie, veggies, and french fries. Funny how she is already eating so many foods that we were so careful not to give to Ryan and Kaylee at that age. She has been so eager to eat along and she really doesn't like to be fed at all. Alyssa also loves Rogue. Of the three, she's the one who plays with her and feeds her at the table. She knows all our names and can say bottle (Bo), Wo (Rogue), Wow (when something falls), Wyan (Ryan), Mama (over and over and over again), Da-y (daddy), THSH (Kaylee). She can sign that she is hungry, which is too cute. The other two didn't really do that either. She is my favorite sleeper. She goes to bed at 6:30 - 7 pm and gets up at 7:30 -8am ... Why couldn't I have three of those? She is a major jail breaker. She knows how the child locks on the tv stand work and she can jail break the gates :(. This is starting to present some problems. She absolutely loves the water. She nearly drowned three times in the tub had I not been there. It doesn't phase her. I finally took her out and she managed to sneak in with Kaylee and attempted to dive in (literally) with her. Again had I not been there she would surely have drowned. Today we're getting her new swimgear for the pool since she can't be in her little boat anymore. Super excited.
The time change went a lot better this year. I think it's because Ryan has school every day. The only problem is dinner time and such.
Kaylee loves her school work. She is doing 'homework' everyday. It's basically all the preschool activity books I bought her that we do together. She is really smart too. She can count to ten and recognizes the numbers. She can really count higher, but it's not a preschool requisite. She knows all her uppercase letters and most of her lower case letters. She can write her name. She absolutely loves her ballet, which soon ends unfortunately. We go to the library together, do projects, read books, work on her 'homework', but she still wants more.
11/3/2011 Just uploaded the pictures from Halloween. We went to the mall today to play. All the stores are already decorated for Christmas. What happened to Thanksgiving?
11/2/2011 Had fun trick 'r treating with the kids. They were all excited about their costumes, even Alyssa who was dressed up as a pumpkin had a good time. Actually I would dare say she had the most fun. She was bright eyed and bushy tailed even two hours passed her bedtime. The other two were tired quick and they wanted to go home and eat candy. We ended up in our neighborhood first, but it was really not exciting this year. Then we went to a friend of Dan's and in her street it was really great. They had bonfires on their drives and people were dressed up and scaring the kids. It was loads of fun. Didn't get a ton of candy, but it was all good candy. They don't eat it all anyway.
10/25/2011 We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday. IT is supposed to be the only non raining day that Dan will be home. So we went to Wells farm, which is small, but the kids loved it. We went in through the corn maze. I honestly think it's the first time I've been in a corn maze. We used to play in the corn as a kid and built huts and stuff, but I don't think I've ever been in a maze. It was fun. We got lost and had to backtrack. Of course the kids got to pick out some pumpkins and we bought apples. Yummy honeycrips. Apparently they won an award for the best tasting honeycrips this year. They are yummy.
Today we went to celebrate Alyssa's birthday. We had cupcakes and went to ChuckE cheese's. When we got back her gifts go delivered. She loves her new little "laptop", It makes sounds and counts and stuff.
10/22/2011 Life is Finally settling in now that we are a little organized. Ryan is doing much better at school. It seems he finally realized what the rules are. It took a while. His teacher, Mrs K, had to put him at a table by himself and we had to have some serious conversations with him. The thing that helped him most was bribery  . I told him if he stayed in the green bucket five times in a row we would go to chucke cheeses. It actually still took him a while before he had five in a row, but now we have we're going to chucke cheese's. What Ryan doesn't know is that we were going to go there for ALyssa's birthday anyway. We're finally celebrating her birthday on Tuesday, which is when we're going to chucke cheeses.
Monday we want to take them to a pumpkin place. It's supposed to be the only day that it's not raining in a week and Halloween is already creeping up. We didn't even get their costumes yet although both Ryan and Kaylee pretty much know what they want to be. Ryan is going to be wolverine and Kaylee want's to be Rapunzel. I have a feeling though that Kaylee might change her mind. We're not sure about Alyssa yet. I think maybe we'll let her be a princess this year.
I went through Ryan and Kaylee's toys twice and I got rid of a giant box of toys that so far they don't even realize are gone. We're going to have to slice more out of their toyboxes (see picture), because all they do is dump everything upside down and make a giant mess. It's kind of cool that Ryan and Kaylee are sleeping in the same room they are playing much better together now. Alyssa gets to join in too. I am just so amazed at how Ryan and Kaylee love to play with Alyssa. They look out for her and build towers for her with blocks that she knocks down. Very cool. Added some pics of the apartment. It's still a little messy, not everything has a home, but it's getting there.
10/14/2011 So how are we experiencing life in our apartment now? Well it's not bad to be honest. It's obviously a lot smaller, but the only place it really makes a difference is in the kitchen/dining room area. I thought we had small kitchen in the house. We didn't. Our kitchen in the house was easily twice as big. Finding space to put all our pots and pans and food has been a challenge. The dishwasher is also not quite as big and doesn't really hold our big pots and pans. If this was a longterm arrangement I would toss out all our pots and pans and buy miniature sizes. Since we're only talking a year, we're dealing. The dining room is the same thing. Biggest problem there is the carpet on the floor. It really doesn't work with a baby and even Ryan and Kaylee, who occasionally still drop something on the floor. We have removed their booster seats because we need to be able to be more flexible with seating arrangements. It's probably going to drive us crazy by the time we get out of here. 
Ryan and Kaylee in one room is actually kind of working out. They are both kind of scared and now they sleep together they are not so much anymore. What does that mean? No more lights on at night and no more midnight visitor for me. Well, let me rephrase that, there is still a midnight visitor, but I can send her back to her room without a problem. The apartment is actually more quiet then the house was. Now I can actually sleep in the morning while they eat their poptart and watch a show. So instead of being awake at 5:30/6:00 and getting out of bed, I now wake up but can kind of lounge in my bed for another half hour.
For Alyssa it works out better as well. Apart from the kitchen and dining room, she has free roam of the place, which is less stressful for us. However I will still celebrate the day that gates are no longer needed in my house.
The place has been really quiet in the last few weeks except for the past two days. One night at 3:15am a woman felt it was necessary to share an emotionally charged conversation with the complex from the parkinglot downstairs. It was "the young and the restless", she being young and me being restless.
Yesterday at a little after 2:00am someone decided it was time for karaoke. The music and song weren't bad, but they turned the volume up, then down, then up, then down. That and the repetition in music choice is really what did it for me. This was not in our building by the way. I'm surprised nobody called the cops. We just turned the fan on in our room and blocked out the noise that way.
Alyssa is doing well. Just decorated her room today, I already did Ryan and Kaylee's room. It makes it feel a little bit more homey and she loves the fairies on the wall. She is one smart cookie. She threw her bottle on the floor for the umpteenth time and I told her that wasn't allowed. Then I told her to pick up her bottle and put it on the table. She did. I was amazed. She had a cold/fever last week which she shared with me. So sharing is something she does well too. So now I'm a little under the weather just as Dan has to go back to work for three. Such is life right?
We went swimming for the first time yesterday. It is definitely a challenge and I need to bring the stroller to contain Alyssa once we're done. We had the pool to ourselves though and the kids had a blast. That is definitely going to be huge. We can go every week and let out some restless energy. Of course it isn't grandma and grandpa's pool. We nearly choked from on the chlorine fumes. Yikes. Ryan can pretty much swim without swimfins. It's a doggie style swimming, but who cares. Thinking about getting him some real swimming lessons.
Kaylee had her first ballet class yesterday. I'll post a pic. She was very shy at first (?). Not used to that from her. She had a blast though. I don't think she really knew what ballet was so she was surprised. Ryan still loves his Tae Kwon Do. Dan went with him and now they have something to do too.
Tomorrow we have a playdate with Ryan's friend from our previous address and we're going to playworld. Hopefully I won't have to contain them too much.I haven't told the kids yet, because they like to go nuts when they hear these things. Wow it sounds so busy when I write all this down and it has been. That doesn't even include the two doctor/dentist visits we had, the daily carting around Ryan to school and back and wrapping up some last lose ends at the white house (as Ryan and Kaylee refer to it).
Alyssa went to the doctor this week too. She had to get five shots. Crazy... the poor girl just was so sad. She is big and tall. 26.5 pounds and 31.5 inches. All in the 95 and 98th percentile. Also her head circumference is there, which is different from Ryan and Kaylee who's heads were in the fiftieth percentile. So Alyssa has a big head.
Dan and I finally went out this week too. We did Olive garden and transformers 3, which was so nice. Can't remember the last time we did that. Florida maybe? That was in May.
10/7/2011 Amazing isn't it. Two days in a row online. Actually we have our computer in the livingroom now and it gives me the chance to get online now. I managed to do a lot of clearing out of the livingroom yesterday, so the picture with the mess is no longer... Still a lot of boxes in closets that need to be done. I thought I would try to upload some pictures and maybe video from the past few months and write about the kids like I've been asked about.
Alyssa is doing so great. She has grown up so much in the past few months. She still doesn't walk without holding on to something, which is so much later then the other two kids. I'm actually pretty happy about it, because she doesn't mind being carried. She can already say a few words. She says mama all the time. She can say daddy. She can say Ryan, which is pretty funny. Dan has a video of it. She is immitating our sentences that we say a lot, like: "I love you"; "Good morning"; "hello princess". Things like that. I don't think anybody else would understand it mostly because it's just our tone of voice. Although she clearly said "I love you" one time, she hasn't repeated it.
Kaylee
Kaylee and Ryan sleep in the same room right now. They were allowed to choose their wall decoration and Kaylee chose Rapunzel. She wants to grow out her hair like Rapunzel. Don't think it's a realistic goal, but hey she is four. She has been really crazy about reading herself. She takes for example Jungle book and makes up stories by herself. It's very cute. She hasn't read to me yet, because every time she sees me listening she gets shy. She seems to not mind the transition to the apartment at all. Neither Kaylee nor Ryan have been sleeping well. They wake up at 5:30 in the morning. You can imagine how much I don't love that. She can be a handful especially when she is tired. Listening is still very difficult for her. Now that we're in the apartment we're going to work on letters and such again. Of course over the past weeks with moving that has fallen completely by the wayside. Kaylee is going to start ballet class. Actually it was supposed to start yesterday, but because of the move I completely forgot. Isn't that just great.
Ryan has difficulties at school. He is such a social chatter box that he can't seem to shut up even when the teacher is talking and warns him. We are working very hard on voice control. For example when someone is one foot away from you, you don't have to talk at the top of your voice. That and remembering to listen are our main areas of improvement. They work with buckets at his school. A variation on the traffic light. They make a contract with the teacher, when they break it, they get a warning. If they still break it then their stick gets moved to the yellow bucket and finally to red. When in red, the teacher emails me, which has happened several times already. I don't know how much of his craziness can be attributed to the move. He seems fine with it, but with kids it can be hard to tell. He's not mean or bad at school, just super distracted. I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes a teacher. He is always about telling people a good way to do things. Not patronizing, but to help. He loves to play with his friend Mason who used to live across the street. I'm a little happier now that he's not right across anymore, because play dates are a little more defined. He is learning to read and he's got 'homework', which I have to say we haven't gotten to again, because of the move and everything. I just hope it doesn't mess with his progress. He has music class, library hour, computer class, gym class. He has loves all of them. Since we moved one street from the school district we were in, we had to file some paperwork to have him stay in this school. We're told it's a formality, especially since we're moving to Florida, but I haven't heard anything back regarding it yet. Ryan also doesn't seem to mind the move. He occasionally says he'll miss the house and that he didn't want to leave. We enrolled him in Tae Kwon Do, which he likes, but we already missed one class because of the move. Oh well, better next time.
10/6/2011 Good grief it is finally over. Well, just a few more things and then it's over  . The house is empty. It's a strange feeling to leave a house you've been in for nearly eight years, but if all works out next year we'll be in another house. They say fortune favors the foolish, let's hope it stays that way. So, yes it's sad that we're leaving the house, but we're moving on to other adventures. I hope the new people will be happy there. We met the renter. A lady with three kids. One in college in North Carolina and a seventeen year old and an eleven year old girl. They just sold their house and are kind of trying to figure out what they want to do. She indicated that they would probably stay for about two years. The house we left behind is dirty. From moving and such it's just a mess, but we have no time to clean. The property management people are coming in today and doing their thing. Changing locks and make it move in ready. Yes that includes cleaning.
Unfortunately Alyssa's birthday kind of suffered since that day we did our major moving, but we'll celebrate it soon. I just don't know when yet. The apartment is great. We can currently not see the floor. In our haste to clear the house we didn't have time to put things away as they came. I think we can find a home for everything. We have three storage units... haha. Tuesday we went into "oh shit" mode when we realized that there was still so much to do and we didn't have time to sort through it as we took it out. So we dumped it in another storage unit. We'll slowly go through that within a month or so.
Moving with kids is also a challenge. They went to daycare two days, our major moving days. Alyssa went an extra day and a half, because I really can't do anything when she is around.
Dan and I are broken. Hot showers and painmeds no longer work. The last two days when we got up we were already halfway spent. Our bodies protested loudly, more like screamed that they no longer wanted to do this work, but we kept on going. Especially Dan who work last night till midnight to get the last stuff done. He has to work four days in a row. I feel so bad, because someone has to stay with the kids and could no longer work. I did set up the bed and tried to put some stuff away at the apartment, but there's so much that can't be done when the kids are sleeping. One big lesson we have learned. The kids have entirely too many toys. We knew they had a lot but I think we brought in more boxes with toys then we did other stuff for the apartment. So there is going to be a major clean out in that department. We need to put some serious thought in what toys we keep and which ones we donate. It's not strange, because truthfully we haven't gotten rid of any toys, or many toys I should say. We're trying to save a lot for Alyssa, but I think we're going to can that idea. Or at least be more discriminating. We have to.
It feels good to have shed so many things. I think you get complacent about things in your house. You'll get to it someday, but before you know it years have passed and the stuff is just piling up. Dan and I are pretty discriminating, but it still wasn't enough. The highlight of yesterday was definitely the dump. We had fun throwing nearly 1000 pounds of stuff away. There were some sad moments there too, because we got rid of some things that we weren't really ready for, but I suppose if Goodwill doesn't want it, it's probably time to let go .
9/30/2011So many things have happened in the last few weeks. It's been kind of crazy. About a week and a half ago we learned that the house rented. The family that moves in is a married couple with three kids. The oldest is in college and one of them is in highschool. I don't really know how old they are. They wanted the place really bad and paid the downpayment right away. After that they have 24 hours to cancel without losing their deposit. They didn't. So ever since then we have been packing like maniacs not really believing that this is finally really happening. We have a three bedroom apartment. We downsized from nearly 2300 feet to 1400 feet. So it's been a big adjustment. Basically we lost two bedrooms, a livingroom, a garage and a mudroom. Oh and a half bath. It has been a blessing that I'm not working because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten this done especially since Dan can't take any time off.
We're not really done yet. We had to get two storage units to store all our things for the yard and other large furniture and boxes with stuff that we're not touching until we're in Florida. We're sad we're leaving but we're also super excited.
Biggest draw back so far is that we only just found out that the apartment we have falls outside the school district Ryan is in. This was unfortunate and all we thought it was going to mean was that Ryan couldn't take the bus anymore. Now today the school called and we have to file paperwork to see if Ryan can stay in this school or if he has to transfer to another school. I thought it was kind of strange. I would hate to do it since Ryan also goes to another school next year and all the changes are super confusing to him. I don't know how hard it is to keep him in his current school. The school he's in is much better then the one he would have to go to.
So we have stayed at the apartment two nights now and it is a little bit getting used to. Dan and I have been absolutely going nuts driving back and forth with furniture and boxes. My right shoulder has been really bothering me and lifting some of the heavy stuff we really need has been a challenge. Alyssa did not like it at first but she is starting to adjust. The kids are now sleeping in the same room and so far so good. We decorated half the bedroom with rapunzel and the other with super hero squad.They love it. Next week we have some big furniture to move. Essentials like the couch, the rest of our bed, two dressers and a bunch of furniture that is going to go to the storage unit. Rogue is probably the most confused, but she is adjusting well.
I will try to put some pictures on the website one of these days of what the place looks like. We really like it and can deal with some of the stuff just because it's for a year no longer. Basically the kids can still play outside. In the "backyard" there are woods and we are very private. It is super quiet so far. We've only heard noise once in a while. Lots of dogs here too. The livingroom is pretty good size. The kitchen and dining room are tiny. There is concrete between the floors which is why it's so quiet. We're on the second floor.
9/6/2011 This morning at 7:30 Ryan started to get really impatient. He kept asking why the bus wasn't here yet. So at eight we stood outside while it was a lovely 40 degrees (no that's not sarcasm). It was wonderful. We all stood outside to wave him off. The bus was only 15 minutes late. They warned us about it of course. Dan wasn't there unfortunately, he had to work. He felt super guilty, but I told him it was probably better. That way it doesn't look like too big of a deal, besides he will be there tomorrow. The bus came, we posed for a picture and off he went after a hug and a kiss. No look back, no worries. It was a relief. In the back of my mind I was prepared to follow the bus if needed. Something that apparently happens quite frequently, but was not necessary for me. So when Ryan left Kaylee and I started our school. We made school rules, learned about the letter A, talked about the color red, read a book about the letter A and started on a day of the week wheel. Then Kaylee worked on a puzzle with numbers. She was so excited about the letter A that whenever she sees it, she lets me know. Let me tell you there are a LOT of words with the letter A in them around the house. Tomorrow we're going to the library after Alyssa and I are doing a food tasting test. I have pictures that I will post, but probably later this week depending on when I can offload them. Ryan came back from school and I asked him how his day was. He said it was awesome. I had to go to the bathroom four times. I don't know if he meant four minutes or actually four times. It seems a lot for such a short time. I'm so impressed with this school. They are a tripple A school, which means they are rated as one of the best ones. Ryan's teacher is a sweetheart, her name is Mrs K.and everybody who hears he's in her class tells us she is great. So he had a great time. He has already made a new friend named Jacob, on the bus of all places. I was impressed. My little socialite. He was worried about not being able to remember all the names of the kids in his class. I told him it would take some time and if he couldn't remember someone's name he should just ask them politely. That really put him at ease. I told him the other kids wouldn't remember his name right away either and that it was okay. It's funny to see how he trying to solve all these "problems". Speaking of problem solving. Alyssa is learning how to walk the stairs. She can walk up them, but now she is learning to go down them. Yesterday she was practicing and you could see her little head trying to figure out how to do it without falling. She finally figured it out and went all the way down and then back up again. She wanted to just keep going and going. She is also trying to climb the couch. She is just a hair too short, but it won't be long. Yikes, nothing will be safe. She goes after all our remotes, computers, cups, controllers etc... mostly electronics, but in their absence she'll grab anything. Hopefully by the time she can do it she will be past the "I need to touch everything" phase.
9/5/2011 Tomorrow is Ryan's big day. He gets to ride the bus. Don't worry there'll be lots of pictures. He goes back and forth between being super excited and not wanting to go. It will be a new adventure for him. I'm really proud of him and truthfully a little scared for him as he will be riding the bus without knowing anyone. We are talking about it everyday so he is well prepared (he asks to talk about it). I told him who he should talk to and what is going to happen and what he should do if he doesn't know where to go. Anyway, more tomorrow. It sounds like the kids are breaking the house. Also time to start thinking about Alyssa's birthday. Can't believe she is going to be one. Although I love her to pieces just like this, I will be happy when she is a touch older. Not too much, mind you. I don't want it to go too fast either :). I am already sick of the gates and the diapers... At least she is eating regular food. She wanted to eat with us and refused to eat babyfood. Crazy... I remember Ryan didn't even start eating with us until he was one. Also, we're done with formula. It's a little earlier then expected, but she transitioned over to milk really easy and it seems to help her with her diaper rash, which has been at times so bad that nothing helped (magic butt cream, desitin, nystatin, a&d..etc..). We tried it all. Most of the times she is an absolute delight and she is really into Dan right now, which is cool because for a while there she wanted nothing to do with him. She loves to dance and plays with the kids like crazy. She also loves hair, unfortunately for me and Kaylee :). Her hair is really starting to grow in now and I think her eyes have finally decided to turn brown, they have been sort of green up till now. They will be my color brown, not Dan's and Kaylee's almost black brown.
8/25/2011 So much for updating the website more often. Well our laptop is still broke and I don't feel like going to our desktop all the time. It's been really busy at home. Ryan is preparing for school. He starts September 6. We had Open House, assessments, we'll have another open house on August 30, which is actually more of an open class. He'll get to go to his classroom and meet his fellow students. He is excited to drive the bus. I'm a little worried, but hey isn't that my job? I'm afraid mid busride he's going to get scared or doesn't know what to do or something. Of course there will be pictures of his first busride. It's double exciting for me, because we never had busrides where I'm from. I always walked to school or rode my bicycle.
Kaylee is excited too. I told her that as soon as Ryan goes to school she will also get "class". We bought writing books and number books and stuff. She can't wait. She also wants me to teach Spanish, because that is what they taught her at appletree. Spanish emersion they call it... once a week... for an hour...
Alyssa is excited too, but she doesn't know why. She just gets excited when she sees other people get excited.
Kaylee's birthday was fun. We went to Chucky Cheeses and it was bliss. Even little Alyssa got to go on some things. She is such a cutie.
I put some pics up. Just my favorites. I have so many from the last month (272) that it's just crazy to put them al up. I have some more, but probably not tonight. It's taking too long to get them off my phone.
7/30/2011 Well it's been a pretty good first week of being a Stay-at-home-mom. We still have some getting used to do, but in general it was good. I'm actually starting to get caught up on the laundry. Only two more baskets of folding to do. In the mean time I actually get to fold clothes that come out of the dryer. The dishes get done every day. It's a miracle. I do have to say that I'm shocked at how much cleaning up I'm doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the cleaning, but when I was working I thought our house was at least decent. After being home for a week I sincerely doubt that.
I am learning new things about the kids. Especially Kaylee who is just the biggest story teller. She makes it up as she goes along. I should record her and if she keeps it up I'm going to encourage her to write her stories down. Tonight's story was about Tesa luth and Lana lutz, about butterflies and suns with dresser drawers and brothers and sisters. In fact she is still telling stories in her bed right now. We cooked together tonight. I made Sheppard's pie with fresh ingredients. Fresh ingredients usually die in our fridge before we remember to use them. Her birthday is coming up soon and she can't stop talking about it. Not sure what we are going to do yet. It's hard to decide this year. Any suggestions anyone?
Alyssa is going through a rough time. She has a yeast diaper rash. Third kid and the first time I know that there are more then one type of diaper rash. Ryan had terrible diaper rash with sores on his butt and everything. Alyssa's yeast diaper rash is very painful. The doctor prescribed a nystatin mixture with cortisone and desitin, which we mix ourselves. The poor girl starts crying as soon as she sees her changing table. This girl is, by the way, a very smart cookie. She already knows that the remote control does things to the tv. She is forever hunting the remotes down and pointing it at the tv and no she doesn't put it in her mouth. Same with the controllers for the PS3 and Xbox. She's been doing it for a while. She is so close to walking by herself. She already decided she doesn't want baby food anymore, so tonight she had sheppard's pie. She is very very attached to me. Sometimes that is hard, like when I try to cook. Dan can't console her because he isn't me.
It's been a good summer so far. We are pretty much out in the pool every day. It feels like it's a thousand degrees. I hate that kind of weather. I feel like we've been couped up in the house all winter and now the summer is finally here it's too hot to go outside, but I digress. So the pool helps and the kids have a blast. Now that we set up the pool in the front yard it's perfect. I feel that we have been so blessed this year with how things are going. Our luck just needs to hold out a little longer.
We have taken lots of great pictures. I will off load them from my phone and post them soon.
7/26/2011 Yay, our laptop works again, hopefully I get to update a little more frequently then every 20 days. Lots of stuff has happened. The saddest of all was that I had to put my cats down. It was coming, but they have been with me for nearly 14 years. Caspar has been sick for nearly 2 years. Nothing we could do was going to make him better and he was only getting worse. Sammy was blind and was starting walk into doors and with Alyssa becoming mobile we had to put the gate up and their food in a different spot. It was hard for them to find their food, to get to it. With all the other problems we figured it was time. It was super sad, but the animal hospital took really good care of us and the cats. They have been cremated and their ashes interred on the local pet cemetary. For all they have meant to me/us, especially when it was just the three of us alone in California, that is the least we could to for them. As much as we miss them it is also a relief that we don't have to take care of them anymore. The litterbox, which in the past few years they had trouble using is gone, and of course not having the hair is great. Otherwise we miss them so much. The kids too have been asking about the cats and are so sad that they are no longer with us.
The other very significant change in our lives is that I quit my job. Last Friday was my last day. It has been an absolutely wonderful last two weeks. I have gotten flowers and lunches and so so many people who expressed sadness that I am leaving. It made me feel really good. You know that you're not irreplaceable, but it's just nice to know that people are going to miss you both personally and professionally. So it's only been two days and really doesn't feel like I've quit yet. It feels more like a long weekend. It's actually been kind of hectic since today we got more people to view our house. For those of you who don't know. We are trying to rent out our house. If it goes well, we are going to move to Florida. So far we've had about fifteen or so viewings. It's had a lot of inquiries, but so far no takers. So today we had an additional two viewings. They were right at 5 and 5:30, so we went to the park and had a picnic dinner. It turned out to be a great day and the kids had a blast.
The kids are doing absolutely fabulous. Kaylee is telling all kinds of stories. She is so inventive. I love how she is just this sponge and loves to learn and do things together with me. Ryan is crazy about computer games, whether it's PS3, Xbox, Computer, Vtech games, Leapster, you name it, he loves it. He has for a few weeks now a "best friend" across the street. He, Mason is his name, is a year younger then Ryan and both Ryan and Kaylee go over to his house a lot. They have so much fun.
Alyssa is walking with the help of the couch. This, for me, is the time I hate most. It is the time when you can't leave them alone anywhere unless it's superproofed. She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth and has a particular fondness for electronics (remotes, leapsters, phones, etc...). The kids leave their toys on the floor, but they are pretty good at keeping their littlest toys out of the way. They absolutely LOVE Alyssa. The only time they don't like her is when she yells. Boy does she have some vocal cords. Actually I think she is past the whole yelling part now. It was deafening. I am certain I've lost some hearing tones because of it and we tried many things to stop her from doing it. She is also mostly eating along with us at night, which is very convenient for us. I still have to go to the store and get her some sippy cups to see which one she likes. Unlike my other two, Alyssa seems to have zero interest in holding her own bottle during feeding... Then again why would you if you can lay there so relaxed. She is so cute.
7/6/2011 I did something very scary yesterday. I quit my job of almost 14 years. It's been a long time coming. Dan and I discussed it to death and now finally with Dan having a job that can support us all we have decided to do it. It is very strange. I have have always had some kind of job ever since I was 15, so to all of a sudden not have it is just beyond weird.It also seems ungrateful in a time when so many people are unemployed for me to just give up working. My last day is July 22nd. My new title: Stay-at-home-mom. Our next plans, yes we always have those, is to get ourselves out of Michigan within a year. Keep posted you never know what may happen next.
7/4/2011 Some more pictures of Alyssa. Took some of Ryan as well. Unfortunately Kaylee was a little difficult today so no good pics of her.
6/30/2011 I can't believe it's been over a month since I've been able to get to the website. It's just been incredibly busy. Since last month Alyssa has started crawling and she is working hard on walking now. She pulls herself up already. She is also very attached to me. I love it. As soon as I come home from work Dan might as well give up trying to feed her, because she wants none of him.
5/25/2011 Ryan had his preschool graduation today. They got a video with all the pictures of the year, which I posted. Dare any one to pick out Ryan in the pictures. Also got some video Dan shot where Kaylee actually decided to be part of the graduation event, even though she had no clue what was going on. Very cute. It was all very unofficial. It was more an end of year celebration, but the teacher did a great job.
5/16/2011 I'm uploading some pictures from Florida and before on the website. Also wanted to say how big of a difference Ryan's glasses are. Even at half the prescription he can tell the difference. He doesn't realize it, but he doesn't want to be without glasses anymore. He can now sit on the couch and watch a show or play his games. Outside he suddenly recognizes letters and numbers and is forever spelling things and well, reading. I have wondered for a while why he didn't seem interested in reading. He loves stories and such, but he never wanted to try to read or if we asked him what something spelled he would be aloof and just pretend disinterest. I'm so glad they test for eyes at school. Kaylee was just tested at her school and she passed.
We started 'bribing' Ryan to wear his glasses, but after only five days he's forgotten about it and he wears them without effort every day. We are still going to the movies this week because he deserves it after such an adjustment. Kids never cease to amaze me. I think in a lot of ways that adults have a harder time adjusting to changes then kids do. Love you Ryan (and Kaylee and Alyssa :) ).
5/13/2011 So I finally put a picture up of Ryan's glasses. He chose them himself and he's been really good about wearing them (with the help a bit of bribary). We picked them up after we came back from our vacation in Floriday, which was absolutely wonderful. The flight down was very pleasant. Very nice to fly with no stops. The airline, allegiant, was actually really nice. Enough leg room and stuff. Very important to tall people such as us :). It was 95 when we arrived. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there and when it got too hot we cooled down in the pool. There is definitely something to be said for having a pool, although maybe not here in Michigan. At least when we came back it wasn't freezing. Actually the weather was acceptable at mid to upper 60s. Dan and I got to go out a couple of nights and a couple of days even. The kids bonded with the gparents. It was great.
4/15/2011 Interesting week. We took Ryan to the pediatric opthalmologist. He had two eye tests at school that he failed. At first we thought he was goofing around so our own doctor did a test and he failed that one too, so they referred us. We weren't sure what to expect, but it turns out that his eyes are pretty bad. He's got a stigmatism and is near sighted. Poor guy was so tired. I guess his eyes are working so hard that when he got the drops to dilate his pupils he just wanted to curl up in the chair and fall asleep. We expected that he needed glasses so we have been talking about getting him some glasses and he's pretty excited about it. He picked out some nice glasses. For now he's going to get half his prescription so his eyes can get used to it and then in three months he has to go back and he's going to get his full prescription. I don't care that he has glasses, but I did feel bad that he's been walking around with it for I don't know how long. Once he gets his full prescription he's going to live in a completely different world. So glad they do vision tests at school.
Things with Alyssa are going really well still. Everyday she does something new and is always smiling. She is just such a delight to have and thank my lucky stars every day that we decided to have her.
Kaylee is doing really well too. Now that she is going to an actual daycare center she is doing much better. The change was almost immediately. You can also tell she is learning. She is telling stories and is generally just so much better behaved. She is doing projects, making new friends. I'm so happy for her.
4/9/2011 Alyssa can now roll around... Go Alyssa. Funny, just when I took her to the doctor he asked if she was rolling around yet and I said "No", next day she could... lol. Does that mean she is a good listener? One can only hope. Went to the ZOO today. it's a gorgeous day. Tomorrow we're supposed to get high 70s. Yeah. Summer is coming, summer is coming.
4/7/2011 Took Alyssa for her 6 month well-visit today. Height 27inches (89%), Weight 19lbs 5oz (95%), and head 44.1cm (89%). She is healthy, right on schedule development wise.
4/2/2011 adendum: I forgot to tell this cute story from Friday when I picked up Kaylee form Appletree, her preschool. When I came in all the kids were playing outside. I called her, she was playing with this boy in the back of the play area. She ran up to see me, yelling "Moooommmmyyy", very cute. She gave me a big hug then she ran back to the boy. She tried to give him a hug, but he didn't want to. She was sad and walked back toward me. Then the boy, named Aiden by the way, called her back and opened his arms wide and she ran to him and gave him a big hug. Then she turned around and ran to me. Underway she turned around and blew Aiden a kiss... My girl has her first boyfriend LMAO. Apparently they are pretty inseperable at school.
4/2/2011 Not much going on. Monday Alyssa is 6 months old. It's crazy how fast that went. I'm kind of sad that it's going so quickly, but I have some funny video of Ryan and Alyssa. He's forever the entertainer and she loves it. They might be sideways, but that's 'cause they were shot on Dan's iphone.
3/20/2011 Wow get to update the website twice in a row. Can't remember the last time that happened. Had an amazing weekend. It's the second week that Dan is doing his weekend option and so far it's working out really well. Although maybe it's a little much for Dan during the week when he has the kids. He has to change his day/night quite frequently and that's not easy.
Alyssa is so much fun now. She is rolling around on her stomach. She still has some trouble rolling back from her stomach to her back. In her swing and bouncer she works her arms. It's really cute to see. Currently she is quite chubby and I can only think that it's because she is at the beginning of a growth spurt. I've pretty much stopped breast feeding, except once during the night. Mostly because it's simply easier then having to prepare a bottle. She doesn't always wake up either anymore. Anyway, it's already a lot easier not having to pump all the time. I wish I had been able to do it without pumping. So she is doing really well. Just playing around and having fun. I'm so happy every day that we've made the decision to have a third child. I couldn't imagine our lives without her. Even though our lives are upset right now because she is here. It's totally, completely worth it. I just can't believe she is almost six months old. I just gave birth to her.
Kaylee is also changing. I can already see the difference of her being at Appletree. She learns a lot, especially listening. Today she asked me why I was so angry with her and I told her that I don't want to be angry, but if she consistently doesn't listen to me then I get angry. I think she actually understood. She got in trouble for not listening at school when it was time to get out of the sandbox and she kept pulling out the tosy and putting them back in the sandbox. It's quite an adjustment for her, but one that will benefit her.
Ryan is also doing great as always. He amazes me. He is so incredible with Alyssa, knows what makes her laugh. It's not that he's never naughty, but you can reason with him and he tries so hard to be good.
Yesterday was a beautiful day out here and we managed to go out most of the day. When we were inside we played board games. Today was actually a warmer day, but it was cloudy and it was about to rain. So we stayed in, cleaned Kaylee's room. The days go by pretty fast these days. It feels like spring is in the air and I hope that the cold and snow stays away from us We don't particularly care for the snow and cold. What are we doing in Michigan? Good question. Don't have an answer for you.
3/19/2011 For those of you who know about the Dragons Den we had at work, my team came in second  . We were two points short of going to Rome. Instead Team APPlied won the preliminaries and they are going to Rome instead. Got some great pics. You can also see my new hairdo. After seeing the pictures it made me realize I'm long overdue to lose some weight. So next week I'm starting again.
3/10/11 Boy it's been a while since I was on here. It's been a crazy busy month and really the last two weeks have been insanely busy. Two weeks ago our daycare gave their two weeks notice. Not surprising in a sense with as many things as happened in her life, but still a big surprise to us. So we have been frantically looking for alternate options that don't cost an arm and a leg. We decided to put Kaylee in a preschool. Appletree to be precise, for three days a week. We thought she might benefit from a more structured day. Ryan is going to go to our daycare across the street for two days and the rest of the time Dan is keeping them home. I'm rather jealous. I wish I could be home with them, but since that's not in the stars this is the next best thing. He will have Ryan by himself on Tuesday and Wednesday he'll have just Kaylee for half a day. Thursday they are both home. We'll see how it goes.
Today Kaylee got to try out preschool for the first time and she absolutely loved it. She got a new back pack which we picked out last weekend. It's a barbie pack back. It took her about mmm, one second to decide that's the one she wanted.
Ryan had a vision test at school. They tested him twice and he failed twice, so he had to go to the doctor and failed again. His eyes are 20/50 and 20/70. His vision should be around 20/30 or 20/40. So he needs to go to a pediatric ophthalmologist.
In addition to all these changes, Dan started weekend option, so every weekend I have the kids to myself. I think that will work out well when Spring/Summer comes, maybe even in the fall. We lucked out this year, because we missed so much of the real winter storms.
Oh and I forgot that Caspar, my cat no longer responds to his meds, so he had to go to the vet and we talked about options and euthanasia. Luckily Dan went, because I would've been a trainwreck. We are trying one more medication. He has an autoimmune disease, whatever we do, it won't cure his disease. If he doesn't react well to the meds we have no other option but to put him down. Very sad, but he's had thirteen really good years. Of course I'll still be balling my eyes out when the time comes.
Kaylee had some very cute things she said lately. Alyssa smiled at her and she said: "Mommy Alyssa makes my heart feel better." Then the other day she was playing with Alyssa and ALyssa had some spit up. Kaylee said: "Mommy look, Alyssa is melting." Ryan said some funny things too that I thought I should remember at the time, but of course I forgot. When he watches tv he stands in the middle of the living room and let's everyone know who in the movie he is. "I'm the boy mom" or "I'm Batman mom". Then he proceeds to copy everything they do on tv.
We play a lot of board games lately too. The ones we got for Christmas and some from when the GPAs were here are such a success. It's fun now they can finally play without fighting and getting bored etcetera.
Alyssa is doing well too. She has slept through the night a couple of times. I mean she slept 10 hours straight. She usually sleepts 7 hours straight from like 10 to 3, sometimes 4, but a couple of times she has slept from 8 till 6. Of course on those night Kaylee was up twice or more. She sneeks in my bed and I don't always notice until I wake up the next morning. Can't help it.
Other then sleeping through the night she is getting bigger and more fun. She loves to play, takes her socks off all the time. She is such a happy baby, she smiles all the time. Next month she's going to start on real food. Applesauce and who knows what. I've completely forgotten what the options are, but I'm sure I'll soon be an expert again.
I think this sums up things quite nicely. Next week I will find out if in June I'm going to Italy. We hav ea contest at work called the Dragon's Den and the preliminaries are held next week. The winner goes to Italy for the finals. That would rock, but we have some stiff competition so we'll see how it goes.
Oh I almost forgot Ryan lost another tooth and the tooth fairy made an appearance.
2. Two - way to exercise the kids
2/19/2011 CELEBRATING DAN's BIRTHDAY... Ryan tells Dan: "I hope you get old." :)... I hope so too. We surprised Dan with breakfast and presents in bed this morning. I made a giant omelet and we all shared it in bed... it was family time... so Ryan said. Then I took Dan to Playworld for his birthday...hehehe. Okay we took the kids there for Dan's birthday. We were there for a good three hours and the snacks and stuff are priced very decent. No gouching. Needless to say we had a great time. Definitely going back there again. The kids got to go through the carwash on the way back and we are going to have cake after nap time. Neither one of the kids wanted to take a nap, but they were asleep within seconds after they went to bed.... hahaha.
I'm reading my update of 2/13 and have to laugh... Sleeping through the night...right... She was on some kind of growth spurt or something because she was feeding every 2-3 hours for a couple of days. Yikes. I had to supplement feed formula, because I couldn't keep up. Last night she was on a better schedule again. Crazy girl... We started adding rice to her dinner now too otherwise I really couldn't keep up.
2/13/2011 I'm telling you Alyssa is my perfect little girlie. She must have listened to the doctor and she is sleeping through the night (whenever she isn't teething). She goes to bed at ten and wakes up at five. Woohoo... Happy Valentines to everyone by the way.
2/10/2011 I took Alyssa for her four month well visit. She is getting big. She is in the 95th percentile for weight. For her height she's hits out of the ballpark and her head is just perfect. Yep she is 15lbs, 26 inches, and her head is 43cms. She is doing really well holding up her head and all that. We're starting her on rice, but she does not like the taste of it, even when adding some applejuice, but it's only been a few days, so I'll keep trying. She has been very cranky. Her teeth have been bothering her tremendously. As a result she has been up qutie a few times at night, leaving me worn out and tired. Today was the last straw for me. I had been up five times during the night. once for Kaylee who occasionally gets up. I was so exhausted I took the day off. I went to bed after I dropped the kids off and slept till 3pm. Now it's 10pm and I'm wide awake... mmm, maybe I slept too long. I'm also supposed to start letting Alyssa sleep through the night. Normally she gets up once, when she's not teeting, and I'm supposed to not feed her when she wakes up. Sigh... I'm not ready to deal with that yet. I know it's going to be a battle and I'm just not ready to fight it. Only a month and a half and then I'm going to stop BF. She'll be six months then.
We took the kids bowling last Saturday and they had bunches of fun. Ryan managed to roll the ball without the ramp. Kaylee rolled with the ramp. I was surprised that they liked it so much. Only thing was that, they had a special going for two hours and we shouldn't have done it that long. Live and learn. They got a little antsy middle of the second game and we should've just called it quits then. So next time we're going and doing just one game. Got some cute pictures. I'm waiting for my data cable to arrive so I can offload from my phone. I think that sums all we've done.
Oh we booked our flight to Florida. Very excited about that. We originally planned to go the end of May, but the airline canceled our flights after we booked. So then we had to reschedule and now we're going the beginning of May. So only 90 more days and then we're going. Yay! So happy.
2/2/2011 A first ever snow day for me. Fabory is closed. It's a miracle. I just spent two hours clearing the driveway so it's all good. Ryan and Kaylee were supposed to have pajama day at daycare. They were going to watch a movie and have popcorn. So instead of having that at daycare they are having it at home. We're watching Scooby Doo: Camp Scare. Last night we had a blizzard sleep over. They got to sleep in my bed for one night. Even Alyssa...well, she slept in her pack 'n play. This morning I actually thought I would make it to work. I let Rogue out and the snow wasn't too deep by the door. Then I went outside to clear the driveway and holy canoli, the snow was up to my knees. I tried to start the snowblower, although I wasn't sure if it would be able to handle that much snow. Of course the snow blower didn't work. So I had to shovel. After about 45 minutes Dan came home and started the snowblower...Grrr. He told me there was no way that I would make it to work. He barely made it into our street and he has four wheel drive. So I decided to take the day off, but then I got the lovely message that Fabory is closed today! WOOOHOOO!
1/27/11 I put a bunch of new pictures up and some new video of mostly Alyssa. I haven't seen them all and I don't know if they are worth watching, but I received requests to put stuff on the website, so here it is. I think there are some of Ryan playing the Kinect for Xbox, some with Alyssa and I believe Dan took some video of the kids singing some song.
1/22/2011 About an hour ago we were driving down the highway on our way back from the store and decided to stop by Arby's. We were way late with lunch and figured it was the fastest way to appease the kids who were starting to get restless and hungry. So we got in the exit lane of the highway that merged onto another highway. I just got off the phone with my mom and was trying to tell the kids they had to quiet down because it was snowing pretty bad and Dan needed to concentrate. All of a sudden Dan says "oh shit, that's not good". He had to slow down pretty quickly and looked in his rear mirror and moved the van so a car that come up from behind wouldn't crash into us. Instead it crashed into the car right next to me. Then he moved the van to the right, just in time for a car to pass us. Had he not moved it would've taken off the side of our van. Then he moved the van again and another car whizzed by. Dan's comment? We should've gotten hit, because we just paid off the van.
1/19/2011 Just reread the stories since Alyssa's birth. I feel kind of sad tonight I guess. Alyssa goes to bed at 8pm and I have so little time with her after I come home from work and put the kids in bed.I finally moved back to my own bed last weekend. I had a really hard time leaving her by herself this time, but we got a new monitor and it's so good I feel like I practically sleep with her in the room. I can turn up or down the sensitivity of the monitor. Very cool.
I had an interesting day yesterday. Me and some colleagues from work met at the courtyard by Marriot for a Kaizen blitz. Pretty much a think tank that comes up with solutions to a specific problem. Anyway, I had to pump of course and thought I would just do it in a bathroom stall. I have a battery pack on the pump and figured I would use that. Unfortunately the battery pack didnt' work and the corded plug didn't reach into the bathroom stall. So I ventured out and looked for another bathroom. I found when and thankfully the cord reached all the way into the stall. I set my stuff up and started pumping. All of a sudden the lights go out. It was pitch black, couldn't see a hand in front of my eyes. Here I'm sitting in a stall pumping breastmilk in the pitchblack darkness of a hotel bathroom. A whole new experience. I only needed to do the pumping twice so the second time I went I headed straight for the same bathroom and... there was a plumber working on the sink. I went back to first bathroom and managed to extend the cord from the plug to the nearest bathroom. My pump was sitting outsdie and I was sitting on my hounches (SP?). It was by far the weirdest day pumping I ever had. Still it's all worth it. Although only two more months and then I'm done. I'm kind of looking forward to having my body to myself again. Well, it's ten, time to tuck in...
1/17/2011 What a happy day. I got a call from daycare today and my daycare lady put Kaylee on the phone. Kaylee was super excited about the fact that she won sticker week. She has been SUPER good for the past few weeks with no time outs etcetera. She got to pick a toy and gets to do all kinds of special things this week. We are very proud of her.
The second thing that was really exciting today is that Dan got a new shift he applied for. It's called weekend option plus one. It means from now on he'll be working every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. It means more money, which is great. It means we can go out once a month and not have to worry that it's gonna cost $100 between a babysitter, dinner and a movie. We really hope this works out as we hope. Dan can keep the kids home one day a week and save us some more money. Woohoo!!!
1/8/2011 Happy New Year everyone. I hope the beginning of 2011 has been as good for everyone as it has been for us. We had a quiet night watching tv and we watched the ball drop. We enjoyed some gourmet foods, salmon with caviar, and herring in cream sauce. Yum Yum Yum. Dan's parents were here again and the Ryan got to celebrate his b-day for the third time and then celebrate Christmas again. The kids now expect to get gifts all the time.
Alyssa is doing well. She is becoming a lot more alert. She plays with us. She is teething too and I'm sorry for that, because she doesn't know how to bite on toys and things to help her. She is drooling like a pro and that was really the first clue. She is also starting to sleep through the night. Of course since I'm breastfeeding it isn't helping much because I still have to get up and pump. Got a bit of a scare the beginning of this week when my milk production went down, but all is good now. Kaylee got a bunch of Tangled things from Gma and Gpa and they took the kids to see the movie the next day. Dan and I went to see Harry Potter at the same time. It was really nice. Alyssa went with us and she caused us some difficulty at the beginning of the movie. At the quietest part of the movie she decided to relieve herself in her signature ways. In other words it was really noisy and we were so embarrassed and laughing at the same time. When she started getting fussy I had to take her out and walk for a little bit, but I didn't miss much.
Tonight we're doing dinner and a movie. That means we're ordering take out and we are watching Resident Evil 4.
I was planning to add a bunch of pictures, but the new picture uploader is causing me some issues.
12/26/2010 What a wonderful Christmas. Dan managed to change his shift from 7pm-7:30am to a 3pm-3:30am. I had to put out the gifts by myself, which is far less fun then doing it together, but it was okay. In the morning I managed to keep the kids away from the presents till 8 so Dan could get some sleep. The kids really loved their presents. Their favorites are probably their pillow pets. Ryan got a penguin and Kaylee got the hippo. Other favorites are for Kaylee her belle doll and for Ryan his Star Wars figures. They all make noises... Joy! What was Santa thinking  . We were done unwrapping by 9:30, which lasted longer then last year...lol. We also got sequence for kids, which is very popular. Our gift to the kids and ourselves was an Xbox Kinect. It was a little difficult to have them play it with how hyper they were, but we bowled and played some other games and NO controllers. Absolutely awesome to have it. Dan and I played it yesterday...field and track, bowling and table tennis. It was lots of fun and we are a little sore today.
12/18/2010 It's been a crazy busy week. One of the fun things was that I had a tea party with Ryan at his school. The kids were allowed to invite one special person to come. Ryan wanted Dan to come, but it was in the middle of his workweek and so he couldn't go. I went instead and the kids practiced serving something to drink and serving a cookie. We also decorated cookies. Then they sang Christmas songs. Are there any pictures you ask? Of course not, because I left the camera on the table that day and my phone was deader then a doornail. Of course. Oh well, we had a good time. We also went to two Christmas parties this week. We had Dan's Christmas party. The ER docs of Spectrum health pay for the party for all the Emergency personnel. Very cool of them. It was very busy and the music was super loud. Now you may say...Lisa you are getting old, which I hope I will, but that's beside the point. The music was so loud it was warped and conversation was not possible, which was too bad. Still it was a good time and it was nice to get out and relax.
Yesterday we went to the Christmas party from my work and we did white elephant gifts. This is where you bring a gift, usually it's supposed to be a 5-10 dollar 'funny' gift, but people bring nice stuff too. Then you draw numbers and one by one you can choose to unwrap a gift or 'steal' a gift that has already been opened. Gifts can't be stolen more then twice. It was a good time and I'm glad we went. We got some nice candle holders out of it for Christmas.
The kids are getting a cold, Alyssa too again, just when the holidays start. They are all doing well. Kaylee got into trouble at daycare for pushing a girl. The girl smacked into a wall because of it and had a big goose egg on her forehead. So we've been working really hard on teaching her how to express emotions and not to hit and push and such. She got through this week without any time outs. I'm really proud of her. Ryan is learning bad words and has gotten into trouble for that. He doesn't do it at home so much, so there is little we can do. I did have a funny incident last week. Ryan got into trouble and I gave him a time-out, yeah I know, not so funny, and he was very angry with me. He told me he 'hated' me and that I was a bad mommy etc... He had to go take a nap after that and after an hour of napping I heard him talking in his sleep: "I hate you mom. You're a poopiehead.", after which he proceeded to sleep for another hour. What are you supposed to do? Give him a time out for saying bad words in his sleep...hahaha....
Alyssa is doing really well. She is changing a lot and I feel I miss a lot since she's in daycare. I miss her bunches and am so happy that it'll be Christmas soon and I have some time of with her and Ryan and Kaylee. I took some pictures (naturally) that I hope to post soon.
We finished all our Christmas shopping for the kids and the gifts are all wrapped. Yeah, we're really ahead of ourselves. Ryan's birthday is going to be Sunday. The only day Dan and I have off at the same time in the coming week and a half. Yeah, he's working six days in a row. He comes home from work at 7:30am on the 25th and has to stay up through gift unwrapping and then he has to go to bed. Poor guy. We considered postponing the gifts, but we're afraid that at daycare and school they will find out that everybody already got their gifts. It doesn't really work out this year for the gifts. It means I have the kids by myself for six days in a row. Should be interesting. I've got lots of activities planned to keep them busy.
12/6/2010 Sinterklaas was fun. It's amazing in how little time they unwrap everything you spent several hours puting together. Even though the gifts were small they got a kick out of it and of course they got candy which is always a winner. I "threw" the pepernoten at them in the evening, but I didn't quite get the reaction I expected. They were very quiet and picked up some of the candy and then called me to confirm that yes it is candy that was thrown. I had expected them to scream or something.
Today I took Alyssa for her 2 month well visit. She is doing well. She is 24 inches, weighs 12 pounds 9 and 3/4 ounce. Apart from her head circumference she is in the 95th percentile for both. Her head is in the 75th percentile. Of course she got several shots. Three to be precise and one oral vaccination. Afterward she slept for most of the afternoon. After dinner she all of a sudden had enough and cried for over an hour. I walked her, rocked her, soothed her, tried to feed her, petted her back and anything else I could think of, but she just wouldn't be consoled. So I pulled the good old, tried tactic of swaddling and she ate, calmed down and finally fell asleep. Phew. It was looking like an all nighter for a while. She is doing really well by the way. She is almost sleeping through the night, which is nice for her, but since I'm breastfeeding I can't go beyond 4-5 hours without feeding (no fair). The mornings end up being a lot easier then I had feared. There will undoubtedly be days it won't be easy, but so far the majority of the time it works out. Kudos to the kids for being so helpful in the morning. I lay out their clothes at night and they get dressed by themselves. I give them their breakfast and they eat while I get dressed or feed Alyssa. Then they watch some tv, brush their teeth (by themselves), put socks and shoes on (by themselves), and put on their coats. It's great how helpful they can be.
12/4/2010 Sinterklaas will be here tomorrow. We put our shoes by the chimney tonight and I just finished wrapping all their gifts and setting them out. I tried to do our usual Sinterklaas routine. We watched the arrival of Sinterklaas in his steamer ship and we sang songs and I told them a Sinterklaas story. Unfortunately Ryan was not at his best behavior today. He got in to trouble a number of times and well... it wasn't fun. I almost decided not to do Sinterklaas because of it, but Kaylee was good and she definitely deserved to celebrate. Anyway, tomorrow is another day and I hope we'll have fun. In Sinterklaas tradition I'm going to'throw' traditional Sinterklaas candy for the kids. Ryan remembered that Sint's helpers do that so that'll be fun. I vacuumed the whole living room an extra time so eating candy of the floor isn't so bad.
Alyssa is already two months old. She's going to the doctor Monday for her two month well visit. I suspect all is well. I'm curious to see how much she has grown and her weight too. She has changed so much. She is alert and laughs a lot at you and about things. She is a delight. Getting a schedule, especially in the morning, has been a challenge, but I think we've got it down. The kids have been sooo helpful, brushing their own teeth, getting dressed by themselves. I set all their things out at night and they just love doing everything themselves in the morning. I'm really proud of them. I'm still very tired. As long as I'm breasfeeding I won't sleep more then five hours, although five hours seems like a lifetime right now. She let me sleep twice like that, so maybe it's coming soon. She goes to be at about ten at night and sleeps through most of the morning routinge, so it's going really well. I still mess up names. I keep calling her Kaylee instead of Alyssa and the other day I called Kaylee "Alyssa". You should've seen her face.
11/29/2010 Posted a bunch of new pictures and here are some video's. I'm not sure what they are about, I think Alyssa... surprise surprise. It may be really boring. We've been dealing with some colds and fevers here, nothing serious, but Alyssa's first. She's been really fussy. Poor Dan doesn't get to enjoy her much, because it seems she starts to cry the instant he holds her or he's left with her. "It wants you." he says jokingly.
11/25/2010 Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I obviously have a lot to be thankful for this year. We already celebrated thanksgiving, so no extensive cooking today. It works out, because Dan had to work last night and is currently sleeping. It's been a tough first week back at work. Dan reminded me that last weekend I was by myself so I didn't get a chance to catch up on any sleep. So hopefully next week I'll have a little bit more energy. I am so amazed that as family oriented this country is they have such a lack of care for women (and men) and their newborns. If only because you're so sleep deprived that you are more likely to get into a car accident being so tired. Of course also being with your child. I miss her tons when I'm at work, but I'm grateful that I have a job.
Ryan and Kaylee are still doing wonderful. Kaylee is I think feeling that she is not the baby anymore and it causes some strain here and there. I try to be with her and do things with her as much as possible. We made some Xmas tree ornaments last weekend and did some other activities. Today, since we already did thanksgiving, we're going to bake cookies and I have some window clings. Those are always a big success in our house. It'll keep them busy for a while. Maybe we'll do some more arts and crafts, but I have to think of what it will be.
I had parent-teacher conference for Ryan this week and I heard a lot of good things about him. He likes to play independent, but he is also good at participating with a group, he shares, uses his pencils, siccors, and crayon the correct way. He is a delightful boy. Not that he doesn't have anything wrong wtih him. He is very easily distracted and has a hard time with 3-4 step instructions. He had to draw a boy and was able to make a stick figure. Apparently something that is ahead of his age. Most kids his age draw figures with shapes, a circle for the body etc... He's exactly where he's supposed to be for his age. So all in all a good review. He really tries very hard to do the right thing, which doesn't mean he's never difficult. Now that everybody is gone, the kids are behaving much better. I think it may have been a little much for them with Alyssa coming, Halloween, the grandparents, etc... So the normalcy is good for them. Getting back into schedule.
11/22/2010 So it's been a while since I updated the site. I can see that it's gonna be on the back burner, although if every night goes like tonight it's going pretty good. All kids are sleeping. Today was Alyssa's first day at daycare and she's pooped, I guess. It was a lot of difficulty this morning getting the kids ready. I had prepared as much as possible the night before, which made a huge difference, but I still was only just in time for work. I am happy that this week is short, because it's a lot of getting used to with schedules in the morning. I'm am soooo tired. I have to wake up every three hours to breastfeed. Not sure how long it'll be before she sleeps through the night. It's a lot of work, but it's very satisfying to breastfeed and we're saving a ton of money in enfamil.
So my parents left last Saturday. It was sad to see them go, but at the same time it's good that we're going back to a schedule for the kids and ourselves too of course. I can't believe how fast the time is going by. The fact that Alyssa is 7 weeks old today.
11/9/2010 What a day what a day. I took my parents to Bronner's today. The year round Christmas store. Dan's parents went there and it looked like it was worth going there and it was. We (Alyssa, me, and my parents) left this morning after I dropped off the kids and strategically fed Alyssa. Three minutes into our drive the little girl decided she wasn't done eating and so we stopped and I fed her. Then we got there 2 1/2 hours later and I fed her. Then we finally got to be in the store and it was great. It was ornament heaven and we got some cute ones. We ate lunch and drove to Howell to the Tanger outlet to do some shopping. I had to make sure I was home by 6-6:30 because Dan had to work. I miscalculated by 15 minutes and ended up having to call Dan and tell him I wasn't going to make it. We had to do this switcharoo at the parking lot of McDonalds by the hospital to make sure he got to work in time. Of course Dan was pretty mad at me and rightly so. It turned out to be super crazy since I hadn't fed Alyssa and so I sat in the parking lot of McDonalds feeding her, my parents took Ryan and Kaylee inside to keep them occupied. Then back home, by this time it was past their bedtime and they were all sugared up. Bedtime went pretty well though, but I'm glad today is done and I think I'm heading off to bed and pray that Alyssa will let me sleep.
10/30/2010 Doesn't look like I mentioned that ALyssa's weight was really good at the doctor. She weighed 9lbs 4oz on our last visit, which was on 10/26 I think. So she has gained quite a bit of weight. All is still well with her, she is still yellow and thus very sleepy. It bums me out a little, because Ryan and Kaylee weren't so tired and by the time I go back to work she'll be awake and I don't get to see it. . I can't believe it's only 2 weeks before i have to go back either. Wow time flies, but then again it's not like we sat around and did nothing with having to go back to the hospital and dr's visits etc... Tomorrow it's Halloween. The kids are super excited. Also found some video from the hospital which I hadn't seen yet and Halloween at th zoo that I put up.
10/29/2010 We went to South Elementary this morning. This is where Ryan goes to school. Today he got to dress up for Halloween and they had a little parade. He is probably pretty sugared up, because they got candy and juice at school. Luckily he gets to go to daycare after school where he can wind down a little, although I think they are doing dress up there as well and have a little parade. So I took some pictures at school. Gma and Gpa were very excited they got to be there for it. Ryan told his whole class that Alyssa was there.
10/26/2010 Went back to the dr yesterday since Alyssa looked kind of yellow again. The dr ordered another poke in the heel and her billi levels are up... It's as expected breastmilk jaundice and can last a while. So we still might have to go back, because her levels may creep up higher. Her levels when we had them checked last time were 9.93mg/dl and now they are 11.73mg/dl. We don't have to do anything at this point, just keep an eye on her, see if she gets more tired, more yellow etc...
10/25/2010 Time for some new pictures. I have more, but it's late and I just don't feel like posting anymore. Alyssa is gaining weight nicely now. Kaylee is starting to feel that she is no longer the baby. She is acting up a little. Extra hugs, cuddles, and love and attention seem to help a lot. Alyssa is such a great baby so far. She barely cries, only when she's hungry really. She is awake more and more and we found out that we still have a chance at another blue eyed baby. Of course we don't really care what her eye color is going to be, but it's just fun to us that we have the chance at another blue eyed child.
Tonight Dan and I went to Papa Vino's. We took Alyssa with us so that we could stay out longer. She eats about every two hours. We took our time, really enjoyed our dinner and Alyssa was an angel. In the mean time, Ryan and Kaylee were angels too for Gma and Gpa. It was wonderful to go out together again and actually enjoy each others company.
I'll post more pics and some video when I get a chance. For now... good night.
10/18/2010 Happy two week b-day Alyssa! It's funny to think that if she hadn't been early, she would've been induced two days from now. Our little girly girl has some stomach upset and we're trying to figure out what the cause is. She tends to push really hard when she has a stomach upset resulting in some interesting situations. The first we experienced that was at the hospital when we went back to have her bake under the lamps. Alyssa's diaper was dirty and we decided to be proactive and change it before the nurse could put her under the lamps. I changed her on the bed since they didn't have anywhere else to change her. I put her diaper under her butt, but all of a sudden she pushed really hard and this projectile poop exploded from her little tush and covered the bed and my clothes. It was kind of funny, but we felt embarassed too since she soiled the hospital linen. The nurse didn't really care.
Tonight we had another one of those lovely events and as I was changing her on the bed (we don't have a changing table), I didn't get her diaper on soon enough. She completely missed the diaper and projectile pooped right on my pants and the bed cover. Since her bili levels are still in the 9's we're still dealing with the fluorescent yellow poop. Let me tell you it was lovely to wash out. I got more on my pants then we got on the bed, which I suppose is not a bad thing since it was easy to rinse out my pants.
Can't remember Kaylee or Ryan having issues with the projectile poop...lol... I guess she is just unique.
10/17/2010 Just wanted to let everyone know that we are back from the hospital. Alyssa's bili levels were below 10 on Wednesday and so we were released. Glad to be back home of course. We have since fallen into a comfortable schedule. She is a perfect little munchkin. She has a little bit of gas now and then and that's really the only time she cries. So no complaints here. She is sleeping in our bedroom with us, which is different from Ryan and Kaylee and kind of a surprise for me that it's working, because we did try it with Ryan and Kaylee, but it just didn't work. Last Friday she had to get poked again to test her bili levels, we don't have the results yet. Tomorrow, she will get weighed again to make sure she is getting bigger. Can't believe she is two weeks old already. Time is already flying. I think this time it's gonna be more difficult to leave her at daycare then it was to leave Ryan or Kaylee.
Yesterday we went to Robinettes. It's an apple orchard. They do hayrides, have pumpkins, the donuts and cider. Everything was fine until just after lunch when Ryan just broke down. He was grumpy crying and eventually asked us if we could go home so he could go to bed. He slept all afternoon and when he came out of bed he had a fever of 102.6. He's fine today.
So today we painted our pumpkins and we're decorating for Halloween today. It's great to have the gparents here. They were a huge help when we had to go to the hospital all of a sudden on Monday and for me to recuperate.
Kaylee is quite a character. She is all about 'feelings'. Gma told her that she wasn't allowed to do something and she told Gma: " You hurt my feelings. I'm not your friend anymore."
10/12/2010 Had a bit of a surprise yesterday after I came back from the dr's office. Alyssa did really well, she is a little underweight at 7lbs and 11 oz. She is supposed to be back at her birthweight, so next week she has to go back to be weighed again. She was awfully yellow at the office so she had to have a bloodtest to have her bilirubin levels checked. Dr said he would call before five with the results, so when I didn't get a call I thought everything was fine, until he called at 10pm. He didn't beat around the bush and just said that she needed to go to the hospital right away. It's not dangerous unless you let it go unchecked. It can cause deafness or cerebral palsy if it gets too high. So we trudged to the hospital exactly one week after we did the same thing. We got admitted right away and her little incubator with the photolights were waiting for her. She absolutely loves being in it. It's warm and cozy and I want one at home... lol. I guess I shouldn't have said I wanted to be in the hospital a little longer. One of those "be careful what you wish for" things. Of course if you have to be in the hospital for something this is the thing to go for. It's not that scary and she doesn't cry at all. You can already tell the difference in her, she is more alert, her eyes are open more. I took some pictures, they show how comfy she is. It's like she's in a tanning booth with her little goggles on.We're likely to stay another night. At five today she's going to get another heel prick to have her blood tested. The levels went down from 20 to 16, and I just talked to the nurse and her guestimate is that it will be around 14, but she says sometimes it drops faster. You never know. If it's in the single digits we get to go home, but as it stands, we'll probably get out of here tomorrow late afternoon.
10/11/2010 All is still good with Alyssa. The kids are adjusting fine to her arrival and are still head over heels with her. They want to touch her and love her and hold her. Unfortunately they also want to play with her toys, her carseat, bouncer, and activity mat...lol. Everything is going so much better with Ryan and Kaylee adjusting then I could've expected. Considering that Ryan wasn't really very good when Kaylee arrived, but then he wasn't even two yet. He didn't quite understand what was happening. If we didn't have other reasons for stopping at three, the way I feel after this birth would be a good contraceptive. I feel like I've been run over by the proverbial bus. Long Live Motrin! I am sore from head to toe. Alyssa really did a number on my insides, and my hips, and the anesthesiologist did a number on my back, the epidural site is very sore too... lol. Guess Alyssa was bored and used my insides as a boxing ball or something. After Ryan and Kaylee were born I didn't take much pain meds, but this time...well, as I said Long Live Motrin! Today Ryan is going on his first field trip with his preschool. He is very excited. They are going to an orchard. Dan gets to spend the morning with a bunch of 4 year olds. So far Ryan really enjoys preschool. Dan dropped him off on Friday to meet the teacher and see his class room. Something we were planning to do last Monday, but we were otherwise occupied at the time :). So his teacher is very nice, her name is Jan. Michelle took pictures for us, she has to print them and give them to us, but she is currently in the process of moving, so I assume it'll take a while.
Also today, Gma and Gpa are coming to visit. We're all very excited. It'll be the longest they have ever visited.They will be here for the orchard, for Halloween and they have a few days when both my parents are here as well. It'll be so much fun.
Last but not least, Alyssa is going for her first well-visit. She lost a lot of weight in the first day of life. She was born 8lbs 6oz, when we left the hospital she was less then 7lbs 11oz. I'm sure she lost some weight at home before my milk came in. She is absolutely the littlest one in all respects. Expecting a big child we bought only 0-3 months clothes, but that first day we got out, we realized pretty quickly that we had to make a trip to the store, because she didn't fit them at all. Even some of the newborn outfits are a little big on her. Her newborn diapers fall of her little butt if we're not careful. Since leaving the hospital, she has fallen into a good eating pattern and I pretty much feed her all day, or at least so it feels :-). Her tummy has been upset a few times from gas, but other then that she doesn't cry at all. She prefers to be with mom, but that's really not strange since I'm taking care of her. Dan has been so busy in the house with other things, finishing the basement (drywall, put floor in), cleaning the garage, the house, all things I'm not allowed to help with. Of course he also took the brunt of taking care of Ryan and Kaylee, bringing them to daycare, getting them dressed. I have been so sore, I can barely bend over. In other words it's been a really busy week for him and now he gets to finish it off by going to work three days in a row. I have to say that I'm really blessed by having a husband who is so supportive. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, but I know plenty of people around me who don't get that kind of caring and support from their spouse, so I feel very blessed.
10/8/2010 Well, my turn to tell the tale of Alyssa's early arrival. I finally get a chance to actually sit down and relax a little. Things have been a little insane since we're back home. So Monday morning at 2:30 I woke up quite suddenly. I thought I had to go to the bathroom and actually 'peed' my pants because I hadn't got to it fast enough. In the back of my mind I thought that it might have been my water that broke, but when I walked to the bathroom nothing more 'leaked' so to speak. I did have contractions that were keeping me awake and so I sat on the couch and watched some tv and whatever. I decided to go take a shower and get dressed and when i finally ran out of things to do I called my mom. There certainly are benefits to having family abroad that you can call at ungodly hours because it's daytime over there. Finally at five am my mom said that I should go wake up Dan, since the contractions weren't easing up and I had to go to the bathroom quite frequently. When I got up and actually walked around that is when it started 'leaking' more and it was quite obvious that it was not pee, but amniotic fluid. So I went to wake up Dan. I told him we had to go to the hospital to check it out, I guess I still wasn't 100% convinced that it was my water that broke. I 'd like to add to that that the contractions I had were infrequent and of different pain levels. So I woke up Ryan first and told him he had to wake up because Alyssa was coming. He put his little hands up and said "Yay!'' Very cute. Kaylee too was very excited at the news and they both went to our daycare an hour early.
At the hospital it was quite obvious that I broke my water, but nobody was concerned since she was full term and measured big. I was put in a room and the waiting game started. I got my epidural, which this time wasn't such a success in terms of injection. He missed a couple of times and it still hurts. Anyway, everything progressed fine until the little one gave us a scare. They gave me some pitocin, because I wasn't progressing at all. All of a sudden I progressed from a 5 to a 7 in minutes. It must have scared her somehow. Her heartrate dropped from 140ish to 35 for about 10 minutes. The whole staff ran into the room and woke me from a dead sleep. They did all kinds of things and made me sit on all fours. My nurse was actually prepping for a c-section when her heartrate bumped back up. Cause? They are of course not sure, but most likely she sat on the cord or was holding the cord in her little fist and as she got more scared, she held on more tightly. Soon after I was fully dilated and they said that they would take it nice and slow so I wouldn't tear. I was just laying there, exhausted from being up since 2:30 and I really didn't feel like being in labor for 20 minutes (the average pushing time for my babies), so I figured I would give it my all. Three pushes later she was out. I did tear, because I was in a rush, but I really just don't care. So at 11:50 we were done. I felt really great. I didn't crash until Ryan and Kaylee came to see Alyssa. They were super excited to see her and needed a lot of coaching in order not to kill her or seriously injure her in their enthousiasm. Every day when they come home they ask where Alyssa is and 'play' with her for a while. They have been very hyper and such, but then Dan and I are beyond exhausted. He has a bad cold and hasn't slept much in the last couple of days. I haven't slept at all in the last three days because Alyssa's schedule is a little reversed. I wish that I could have stayed in the hospital for a week. It would've given Dan time to do some projects such as finishing the basement and other things while I would've gotten some rest and gotten used to her and the whole breastfeeding situation. Of course the kids might have gone balistic. They weren't at all happy about me staying at the hospital. Especially Kaylee threw a couple of tantrums. All in all they have been fantastic about Alyssa and about me not being able to help them as much. Well, I think I covered it all. Years from now I can reread it so I can remember all that has happened.
10/5/2010 Alyssa is here, 3 weeks early to surprise us all. She was born at 11:50am on 10/4/10 weighing in as the dwarf of the Opp clan at 8lbs 6oz and 20 inches. Everyone is great, although very tired. Lisa is still in the hospital and will be coming home tomorrow (10/6) with Alyssa. Luckily we had most of our projects in the works or near completion and I have been going crazy the alst 2 days trying to get everything in order for Alyssa's homecoming. Ryan and Kaylee are excited and can't wait for Mommy and Alyssa to get home. Thats all for now, I have more work to do and probably another load of dishes and laundry to try to get caught up. Lisa will be on tomorrow night with the more extrapolated version of these events.
10/3/2010 Got my pregnancy massage yesterday and it was great. Although even lying on the special table for my pregnant stomach is not quite so comfy anymore. The best part? Hand and foot massage. My hips felt like they were unscrewed and working much better, until I started cleaning the house and I was in tons of pain. Not much else going on, we're just impatiently waiting for the arrival of Alyssa.
9/29/2010 Got a little bit of a shock today at the dr's office. I went in for an ultrasound to measure the size of Alyssa. As the other two I measured big again and they wanted to see if she is getting too big. Alyssa is ALREADY 8lbs 11oz and I still have 3 1/2 weeks to go. At about 1/2 a pound a week that puts the baby over the 10 lbs range. I suppose not too strange considering Ryan was 8lbs 11oz 10 days early and Kaylee 9lbs 10oz 4 days early. I guess the scare is that I might have to have a c-section. My dr scheduled the induction on October 20th. I'm already 2cms dilated, which doesn't mean a thing. Sigh. It's stressed me out enough to wear me out today. I've started to retain some serious water as well, cankles are starting to form. I decided to schedule my prego massage this weekend. I could really use it. The thought that I'm carry near 9lbs of straight baby with me exhausts me. I know she isn't any bigger then yesterday when I didn't know that lol.... I could really use the "little one" to come early...
We decided that Ryan should probably go to preschool to keep him ready for school next year. He will start going Monday for three mornings a week.We're lucky they still had a spot available. So it's kind of exciting for him. He'll still be able to go to his current daycare and they drop him off and pick him up, so no extra hassles for us.
I have 10 video's to share, some of them are not going to be much, some of them are just plain fun.
Dan took the camera on the waterslide with the kids
9/25/2010 I posted a ton of pictures. I will also put up some video from the waterpark that are pretty cool. Today I only have 4 weeks to go. It can't come soon enough. Well, starting next week... otherwise I will miss having days off with my parents. I'm getting pretty tired now, but I'm not sure if it's because of this nasty cough I caught. I got it at the OB's office of all places. It says on the door as you go in that you shouldn't come to the office if you are sick, yet their employees do... mmmh... seems odd to me. Anyway, I'm coughing my lungs out, to the point that the kids feel bad for me and get me some water and try to help me put their hands in front of my mouth so I don't have to do it myself. They keep asking me if I'm okay... It's kind of funny. I guess they get it from us...at least me, because when they cough and they forget to cover their mouth I do it for them and I offer them some water and ask them if they are okay. I can't sleep laying down because of the cough which makes it harder to sleep for me. It's not comfortable and now I'm done complaining we can move on to another subject.
The kids are doing fine. They have been pretty tired this week. Kaylee is afraid of monsters at night and it was so bad for a while that she didn't go to bed until 9:30... well asleep I should say, because Dan and I did try to put her in bed. After setting up forcefields on the door, telling her about magic butterflies, monster deterrent lights, a drill that is a monster gun and teaching her how to tell the monsters that if they wouldn't go back to bed the monsters would lose stickers and their mommy's would be very angry, we just told her to go to sleep, because it appeared that she just didn't want to go to bed.
Ryan is also doing well. He's currently a transformers nut. He wanted to be bumblebee for a while for Halloween, but that has since changed to a trooper, and today he was talking about ironman. So I think it's safe to say that he's undecided. Kaylee wanted to be her bear Lilly for a while, but now she's seen costumes she wants to be a princess, which she has been the past two years. She can choose. We'll go to the store and let them decide. Of course they are starting to get impatient. They are no longer scared of the halloween decorations at Menards. There is a scary butler and a witch that grows. Crazy thing is that they already started with the Christmas decorations. Now I LOVE Christmas. it's my absolutely favorite holiday of the year, but even I think it's really early.
9/13/2010 Well, the glory days are over for the prego one. I have since a couple of days very bad pains in my groin area. I guess they are round ligament pains. The pain is so bad at times that when I stand up I almost go through my leg. I can't walk. I have been really stiff and my hips have been out of whack for a while, but so far I've still been able to be active and go places. I think I will start trying to walk during lunch again now the weather is not so hot anymore. Alyssa is sitting so low that I feel like she is going to fall out any minute now, but still six weeks to go.
We went to the waterpark this weekend and it was a blessing to be in the water. The weight was off my body, but getting out was another story altogether. The rest of the waterpark was pretty much off limits for me lol. Poor Dan got quite a work out. I felt pretty useless and was bored at times. The kids LOVED ALL the slides. We were so impressed. The last time we were at a waterpark Ryan was afraid to go down the baby slide. This time he went down all the slides, even the big ones, by HIMSELF. I know some kids his age wouldn't blink twice to do it. Look at Kaylee, she is fearless, but Ryan had to overcome his fear and that makes it so much more special for him. He knows it too. He told us: "I was scared at first mom, but I did it." We have some awesome pictures of them at the park. Dan even took the video camera on some tube rides, of course we'll post. We briefly questioned our sanity for taking the kids to a place like that, because the car ride was trying. They are really in each others hair. We're hoping it's phase with the baby coming etcetera. So far they have been extremely cool about the baby coming. We talk about it freely and tell them that the baby will cry a lot and not do much at first and that they can help if they want etcetera... They are looking forward to it. Well we'll soon find out if all our preparations with them have paid off.
So lots of fun pictures and video coming up soon.
9/9/2010 All the parents are coming over to see Alyssa. First Dan's parents are coming over around the 15th of October and on November 2 my parents are coming. Alyssa will be sooo spoiled. Ryan and Kaylee are already super excited and want Alyssa to come now, for which I'm not entirely ready yet. I only have 6 more weeks to go. Crazy how fast that all of a sudden went.
Ryan is 'Star-of-the-week" this week at day care. That means that he got all his stickers and didn't do anything wrong. Not to speak bad of my oldest son, but I think he was simply too busy riding his bicycle to get into any trouble. He got to pick out candy and a toy and Kaylee was SO jealous that the day it happened she cried all day long. It wasn't until after she came home and Dan told her "but honey you are MY star of the week" that she finally settled down. AAAWWEEE. Yeah that's what I thought. She was completely okay after that.
We have explained to her that if she is good she'll be star of the week as well, one day, but it doesn't really sink in. The more tired she is the more trouble she gets in. Like today. Not sure why she is so tired, probably because of her cold or she's experiencing sympathy tiredness for mom.. Yeah that's it...lol.
After I put the kids in bed I let Rogue out. She had been bugging me while I was trying to get the kids ready for bed, which is unusual. I was in the kitchen when I saw her carefully put her paws in the kids pool and pull something out of it and carefully put it on the deck. She nudged it with her nose and I though it was a rag or something. It turned out to be our resident squirrel who for the past few months has been pelting us with half eaten acorns. Of course Dan had to work and I got to take care of the very "not" enjoyable task of disposing of the body. Luckily it must have just happened, 'cause the squirrel didn't look too gross. I think the squirrel fell out of the tree and hit his head or something. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the squirrel other then that it wasn't breathing. Perhaps it committed suicide, not sure. Rogue was very sad. This is her longtime backyard squirrel friend. We affectionaley call him "Jumpy Squirrel" after the squirrel from Curious George.
9/6/2010 What an interesting weekend. Saturday was kind of rough. I was super exhausted. The kids woke me at 5am and wouldn't go back to sleep. Dan worked on replacing the brakes on the van so I tried to entertain the kids and help Dan as much (or as little) as I can. We had all these plans to clean the house on Saturday, but it didn't work. Sunday was better, but uneventful. We did go to Target and bought the kids new booster seats. Kaylee was so ready for one. We moved their seats to the back of the van to make room for when Alyssa comes. They are so geeked about them, it's funny to see. Dan had to work last night and tonight, so he sleapt all day today and the kids and I just hung out. We had a really good day. They watched a movie while I finally got to cleaning the house. After they were done, they helped me clean the living room and their bedrooms, then we went outside and watched the rain and I decided to paint one of the side tables in the living room that we wanted to paint ages ago. The kids played in the garage, they had so much fun. They were pirates and kept hiding from the bad guys. They of course road their bike. Ryan has since a couple of weeks learned to ride his bike without training wheels and he's loving it. Took some video of that today and some funky pictures of Kaylee. She is starting to become a camera lover too. I am taking coming Friday off. Dan and I are planning a superreorganization/throw-away-all-the-junk-you-never-use-but-save-in-case-you-will-use-it-sometime-in-the-future party... I'm looking forward to it. Is that nesting? Only 7 weeks to go... crazy... the last part has just gone so fast. Here I was 6 weeks pregnant and it just wasn't going fast enough and now I'm seven weeks away from giving birth.
8/22/2010 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! It's a good start of the morning. The kids sang me happy birthday...and I got my presents already... I'll post a pic of one of them later... it's funny. My other present is a gift cert to a Spa/Beauty salon... WOOHOO and last but not least we came up with a name for our little girl and Dan's okay with me posting it. So the baby's name is... Alyssa Gianna Opp. The middle name needs some explanation. We also wanted to give Alyssa something of us. Ryan and Kaylee have part of our names, so we wanted that for Alyssa as well. Gianna is a combination of my mom's name and Dan's mom middle name, Gini and Ann, plus it's Italian, which we also really liked because it goes with the family.
I UPLOADED SOME NEW PICS OF KAYLEE'S BIRTHDAY, SORRY IF THERE ARE DOUBLES AND THEY ARE OUT OF ORDER....
8/18/2010 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE GIRL! Thank you all for the b-day wishes and cards. We didn't really do anything today since we already celebrated her b-day last Saturday. Because we don't have daycare this week, I had to be innovative about my dr's appt. Yesterday they slept till nearly 4:30, but of course today they didn't. Dan was at home sleeping, but I didn't want to wake him, since he won't be able to sleep all day tomorrow when he comes home. He's taking the kids at 1pm. So I decided to take Kaylee and let Ryan play his favorite video game and told him that if he had any problems to go get daddy. Then I turned on the monitor and I took Kaylee with me to the dr and she turned out the be the big star. They thought she was too cute and she was. When she heard the baby's heart beat, she got so excited and kept telling my dr.: "that's my sister, it's my siter beat." It made a big impression on her to hear it. Ryan was fine when I came back. He was superproud, because he didn't have to wake up Dan...
8/16/2010 We celebrated Kaylee's birthday last Saturday. She was very excited and loved everything all day long, starting with the pancakes and the card she got. Got to love kids her age, they could get a box and be super excited. Got some cute pics ofcourse of her unwrapping gifts. They got to watch a new movie and after lunch we took them to build-a-bear where they each got to build a bear.  . They both chose bears that we wouldn't necessarily have thought they would (see pics). They got to step on the peddle that supplied the stuffing to the bear and then they got to chose a heart and they had to blow on the heart and dance around and do some things. Ryan's response was: "why?". I guess he won't just blindly follow instructions. Then they got to airwash the bear, which Kaylee totally loved, more then picking out clothes for the bear. So their bears are called Lilly and Anakin. Ryan chose his name himself. He was pretty sad when he found out that the batman costume wasn't for him, but for the bear, so that is when he chose the jedi costume. We played at the mall and got really hungry and pretty much had pretzels for lunch. We all took a nap and when we woke up we had cake. It was a fun day and the kids were good, so it worked out nicely. Sunday was a fun day as well. This week is kind of different, because I'm working from home most of the time. No daycare... they need vacation too sometimes. Kids are enjoying themselves so far. They got to watch Tarzan and they totally love it. I cry everytime I see it.
8/5/2010 Bad toothfairy! Yesterday, I finally made it to the dollarstore to find a toy for Ryan from the toothfairy. It's this little toy alien guy with a sword and the guy lights up if you press his belt. I got two for a dollar. I tucked Ryan in bed, I told him to put his tooth in his pillow. Next day he wakes up and I hear this sad voice saying. Mommy, the toothfairy didn't come and I went "crap". Yes, I forgot to actually put the toy in his pillow and exchange it for the tooth. I was getting out of bed as I heard this and I hurried to the mudroom where I had stashed the toy. I unpacked one of the two and placed it by his seat on the table and told Ryan that the toothfairy must have been really busy because she left his toy at the kitchen table by his seat. Ryan was ecstatic that he got the toy. Of course he instantly realized that he could put the tooth in the pillow again and that the toothfairy might leave him another gift, but she's not. I have it on good authority that she is going to try to remember to take the tooth from his pillow tonight.
8/3/2010 Exciting news. Ryan lost his second tooth yesterday. I forgot to tell the toothfairy about it so he didn't get to put the tooth under his pillow yet. I give him a car or a gift, because money has absolutely no meaning for him. Ryan is full time at Michelle's now and they are really enjoying themselves. Kaylee learns what it's like to be a girl. They do dress up, she gets her hair braided, they do a girl's make-over etc...
Tommorrow I have my glucose test for gestational diabetes. Pretty standard stuff. I'm not expecting much. We decided not to throw Kaylee a big b-day party. I just don't feel up to it. So we're probably taking them to build-a-bear in the morning and chucky cheeses for dinner. I already signed up with both websites and am getting lots of great coupons off. Naturally the house will decorated and stuff. This weekend we need to buy some presents for her as well. Of course we're getting to the point where she can't be around when we do that.
7/28/2010 Finally feel like posting a bunch of new pictures on the site. It's been a really busy ten days. I am not really sure where the time goes. We've been having fun though. We took the kids to the ZOO last Sunday. We picnic-ed by the ducks and then tracked through the ZOO. As usual the kids had a blast. Favorites are and likely always will be the wave pool, the petting zoo, the parakeets, the play train, and the statue of Mr John Ball. So we have pictures again. I think the pictures with the statue of John Ball are probably going to be standard issue every time we go to the ZOO. This weekend we are going to try to take the kids to the beach weather permitting. They are all excited about that. Tomorrow is Ryan's last day at Kindercare. He will go to Michelle's full time. She does pre-school activities with them, so we don't feel like he's losing out. Ryan is super excited and he actually behaves better when he's at her place. They both come home completely exhausted after they have been at her place. So we're still very happy with our change. Rogue has been doing better on her pain pills. She has received the doctor's approval for all kinds of other supplements for her hip dysplasia (glucosamine, fish-oil). We're waiting for our order online for her previcox and now we can really see the difference when she is on the pills and when she's not. Poor girl is in pain right now.
We got an estimate on the basement repair today and of course we're very excited about the result, NOT! The verdict is that we have to put in a sump-pump. The cause is most likely our yard. When the house was built they put in gravel and such so that the water from rain would take the road of least resistance, but over the years that has started to fail. At least our basement is not underwater, or maybe too bad it isn't because we would've gotten it back from insurance (?). I don't know. Anyway, it should be repaired in six weeks. They are going to do all kinds of things to keep mold from growing as well.
Our unborn baby girl is also doing well. She is kicking and moving around, mostly on my bladder it seems. I wish we had come up with a name yet, but we've been so busy that we haven't even talked about it. In all honesty we haven't seen much of each other. He's been working so much overtime that we see each other half an hour here and in the weekend a few hours. He lives at night, I live during the day. We are just grateful that he can work overtime of course. I think Dan has pregnancy symptoms though. He's been so tired. Yeah, working that much overtime doesn't help, but he can sleep ten hours a day and still feel tired. It's crazy and we joke about it when we do see each other haha. So everything is going it's merry way.
I have to plan Kaylee's b-day party, but frankly I have no idea what to do and who I should invite. I'm kind of lacking inspiration so to say, but I'll come up with something.
7/17/2010 Some fun things have happened over the past week. Dan and I went to see Star Wars in concert last Wednesday. We did it for our anniversary which is coming up. It's going to be seven years and this year also our 10 year anniversary that we're together as a couple and our 15 years that we know each other. Wow! Anyway, the concert was awesome. I shot some video which is a pretty good memory. I will see about posting some/one video this week when I feel like it, which is not tonight. Afterward we went to Olive Garden and ate desert. It was our first day out since Portugal, so that is nearly two months.
Ryan and Kaylee went to the beach last Friday with their new daycare and had a blast. The money they made of the carwash they did last week paid for this fieldtrip. They had pizza for lunch, went to the beach and then had ice cream. Kaylee didn't get a nap for the first time since she's at this new daycare and it was an awesome reminder of the days she used to go to her other daycare. She was in a horrible mood yesterday evening. As tired and exhausted as they were, they woke up a little after five and I had a hard time making them stay in bed till after six AND be quiet.This inevitable leads to a horrible day afterward, which was today. On top of that Dan came home late and wasn't going to be able to help. Of course I had a double birthday and anniversary to attend. So I'm a little worn out now.
I'm glad they had a good time though.
We can see a remarkable difference in Kaylee. As I said before she is generally in a better mood. She plays, uses her toys. It's like somebody showed her how much fun it is. Even though I've tried to show her a million times, somehow it didn't click until she saw other kids her age do it. Her speech has really improved as well. This is something I didn't expect. It must be because she interacts with the kids/adults more. I didn't think her speech was bad, but it is clearer now and she uses better sentences and she has learned new words. It's made the decision easier for us to put Ryan in with her full time as well. That is going to happen 2 weeks from now.
Last week when I came to pick them up they were the last ones there and they were playing in this little house and pretended that they were celebrating Christmas. They had a Christmas tree and presents.
It seems that this year we are hit with a lot of things that cost a ton of money. It started with Caspar getting sick and being diagnosed with Pemphigus, then the van needed repairs, Rogue was diagnosed with hipdysplasia, the basement leaks, Dan's student loans are coming due and we're having a baby underway. Oh I almost forgot the truck broke down this week and it cost a fortune to get it driveable. Dan jokingly said this week that he was going to stay home and find new ways of 'bleeding money'. They say bad things happen in threes, but in our case, it happens in sixes, unless it's by category in which case I'm waiting for my other cat, Sammy, to develop a health problem and I guess something else to go wrong with our vehicles and two more things with the house. At least we're sure we're not going to have twins. We're taking it in stride... At least we're all healthy and we have a beautiful house and sick, but great animals. As long as it's all fixable or manageable we're all good.
Oh the big NEWS for Ryan is that he's about to lose his first tooth. It's one on the bottom in the front. I just noticed today there was a gap and thought there was something wrong. I touched the tooth and it was lose. Ryan now knows it and knows about the toothferry. When Dan woke up, Ryan was super excited to tell Dan, told him all about the toothferry as well. Ryan's big joke is telling me that his tooth came out when it hasn't yet.
7/11/2010 Pretty good weekend, especially today. Kaylee was really upset yesterday because we left the store and then before bed she wanted to go to the park. I promised her that if she was good in the morning we would do a picnic at the park. First thing she mentioned when she woke up was the picnic and the park so after Dan got up, we left, which was around 11. Packed with lunch we went to the park, even Rogue got to go. We really should get some seditives for her, because she is just so anxious, but I digress. We sat next to a play area and the picnic table was in the shade. It was warm, but with the little breeze that was blowing, it was perfect.
After naptime we went to the store for a little while and when we got back we played in the pool, ate dinner etc... just nice and relaxed and just perfect.
Kaylee was naughty at bed time. She kept coming out of bed. The last time she came out I heard her and said:"If it's one of the kids I hear, you better go back to bed, otherwise you are going to get spanked." Kaylee's reply was: "It's not me". How can you get angry at that. Dan and I frequently have moments where we just have to chuckle because of what the kids say. I really, really have to write these things down, it's so funny.
Of course we are (=me) very disappointed that the Netherlands didn't win the worldcup soccer today.  . I promised at work I would come in in orange if we won and in black if we lost. So tomorrow is going to be a boring clothes day.
7/10/2010 Ryan and I both have colds. He's been waking up for the past two nights keeping me awake. Baby girl and I are very tired.
The kids did a carwash at daycare yesterday and it was a huge success. They collected $208 in one day. This money will go toward their field day next week. They are going to millenium park which has a lake. They will also have pizza and ice cream. Very cool that they can do that. They will also have a sleepover this month. Woohoo, hopefully Dan can change his shift, because then we have free babysitter for one night. Of course we will have to be prepared to come get them in the middle of the night. The kids are so worn out every day from going to Michelle's. They play in the pool, do activities in the house. It's so great to see that they are having so much fun and are learning at the same time. You can see the biggest difference in Kaylee who has learned to play, something she hasn't been doing much at her previous day care. She no longer sits in front of the tv all day long or a large part of the day. Most of the time she comes home in a happy mood now. Ryan mostly is just exhausted. So, very exciting stuff. They both have incredible tans too. If they keep this up they will be super dark by the end of the Summer.
7/5/2010 We had a pretty good weekend. We did the fourth a little backward. We watched the fireworks on Sunday night and the parade on Monday morning. The kids were super excited about the fireworks, especially after we set some of our own off after dinner. We let them go to bed and promised to wake them up and bring them to the fireworks. They were sleepy. We went to Grand Rapids. We watched the fireworks from the roof of one of the parking lots by the hospital where Dan works. It was a great view. Kaylee was oohing and ahing and named all the fireworks when she could. "Look mom, it's a heart.", "It's a flower." When we got home we had some more of our own fireworks and it was near 12 before the kids went to bed. Luckily they slept in until 7:45 this morning otherwise it would've been a rough day.
Getting ready for the parade was a little trying. The kids were so geeked about going that they couldn't sit still for half a minute. When we finally got there they were really great. It was probably the hottest day of the month today and we were sweating buckets. It was also very very busy and we didn't get there early enough to sit by the road. It doesn't matter for Dan and me, but the kids get a kick out of grabbing the candy etc.. So we just let them go sit by the road. They did a great job scavenging candy and Ryan was all about wanting everything (fliers, political stickers, bags with booklets, maps, etc...). It was funny to see. They had a great weekend and would like to go again... NOW... Lol.
Fourth of July Clips:
07/01/2010 I'm so sad. I had to take Rogue to the vet today. She's been having problems with her hind leg. She had to have an X-ray and come to find out she's got hip dysplasia, and severe arthritis in her left hip, and some in her right leg from the hip displacia. She was sedated for the procedure, but when they stretched her leg to get a good picture of the femur, she cried under anesthesia. I just about cried when I heard that. She's going to be on pain meds and food supplements to help her. No surgery or anything, it's really expensive and the dr didn't recommend it with her age. It's genetic, nothing we can do about it, but it breaks my heart to know she's been in pain for I don't know how long and she didn't show us. She lost about 8 pounds so far and the doc recommends she lose another 1.1/2 pounds to keep her lean so it will take some weight of her hip . What a sad day.
6/28/2010 Exciting things today. Kaylee went to her new daycare today and she did great. She was a little unsure when I dropped her off and when she woke up from her nap she wanted me (aaawwww!), but she was really excited about all the activities they did. She slept for 1.1/2 hour for nap and she is just in a wonderful mood. Ryan is going to go for two days a week now too and at the end of the Summer he is probably going for the full week as well. They both have kids their age there. I'm so happy for Kaylee, she'll have a blast.They made a paperbag puppet today, she played dress up, they sang songs, and they played in the pool. They have a good behavior sticker area, where everytime they do something good they can get their own sticker and put it on the board. She felt like such a big girl.
The kids continue to entertain us with funny sentences. Ryan is into transformers right now. Some kid at school is constantly talking about megatron. So he told Dan tonight that Dan is Megatron and that Ryan is Megatrim...They say many more just amusing things and I really should write them down, because I so easily forget them.
We have some exciting things planned for the fourth of July weekend. Our parade is on Monday July 5th instead of Sunday. It's a religious thing. Do they do that everywhere? I just thought it was kind of peculiar. Unfortunately that means we probably can't take the kids to see the fireworks since it's so late at night and they have to get up early to go to school/daycare the next day and I have to go to work. I don't know, maybe we'll find a work around. I hope so, because they really enjoy the fireworks.
We've been having warm weather, but it's been stormy. Lots of thunderstorms. We woke up one night when the tornado alarms went off. I remember waking up and wondering when they had starting sounding the sirens for a thunderstorm. It was spectacular on the radar. This giant red blob that covered most of Michigan. We brought the kids downstairs to be on the safe side. They barely woke up. Ryan said with his sleepy head: "This is really scary mom," and promptly fell asleep again.
This weekend I had the kids to myself since Dan had to work. I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle them being tired and the weather being so stormy, but it turned into an awesome weekend. Saturday they pretty much played in the pool all day. For lunch we picniced on the deck. They thought that was just the coolest thing since chocolate sprinkles. Sunday the weather was worse and we had no food left in the house (lunch type food that is). I didn't want to take them to the store because that is just too much of a hassle, so we ended up going for a walk when the rain stopped and when we came back they jumped in the pool after which we drove by Arby's and got them lunch. We brought it home and ate our lunch in the basement. I had promised them a picnic, but the weather didn't cooperate, so we moved the picnic inside. That was even cooler then the picnic outside. So we played some games, read some books, and just had fun. It ended up being this wonderful weekend.
Tonight they immitated the picnic in the basement. Kaylee grabbed a dishtowel and laid it out on the floor and they grabbed all their toy food and set it out nicely on the towel. They had corn, chicken and hamburger and they shared their radioactive waste barrels from their trainset with dad. "Here dad you can have this. Be careful it is hot and might hurt you." Ryan said. It was too funny. I got nothing. I uploaded some pictures. Sorry they aren't the best quality, but our camera is on the fritz. We need a new xd card.
So my water retention has officially started today. I don't remember that happening this early in the game. I still have 17 weeks to go...I know, drink lots of water. Also uploaded belly pic and comparison pic.
6/16/2010 We're having another girl. No more UBNN... now it's up to us to find a name. Yikes. We almost didn't find out that she is a girl because she was very modest. She is right on target for weight, 1 lbs at 21 wks 3 days that is 2 days bigger and 15cm tall. Both Ryan and Kaylee were 2 weeks bigger. So we might actually have a normal sized baby this time and no 9 or 10 pounder. I've gained 3 pounds so far, which cracks me up considering how much I eat I thought it would be closer to 10 pounds, but it's all good. Her heartrate is at 162 and all her limbs and organs are there and she is just perfect. I don't think she looks like Ryan or Kaylee, but I would have to compare the U/S pics to be sure. When I get home I'll post some of the U/S pics. She was kicking the U/S machine whenever it came close. Too cute.
6/12/2010 Kaylee is signed up for her new daycare. She will begin June 28th. We're so very excited.
Can't wait for Wednesday to come around so we find out boy or girl. Apart from feeling the baby move inside, we can now also feel the baby move from the outside, which is pretty cool. It's been pretty hard to go to work these days. I know it's cause I'm pregnant. It's hard to concentrate and actually focus on my work making it hard to get through the day. I remember having the same thing with Ryan and Kaylee, just not this early in the game.
6/1/2010 It's been a challenging weekend. Ever
since we got back from Portugal the kids have been in a murderous mood with each other. They play really nice together and you turn your back for a minute to for example go to the bathroom and you come back and they are in a fist fight. It has something to do with Kaylee getting Ryan so frustrated that the only way he can deal with it is by hitting her and of course she hits back and so on and so forth. Temper temper. I do understand his reaction though, because sometimes I feel that way too when she just keeps antagonizing me and she just won't listen. I hope it is a phase. Of course then you also have to teach him to use his words. It's been bad enough for us to try to find a solution. So we went to the store today and bought a good behavior chart. It turned out to be an awesome day. They were a little difficult in the store, but when we didn't find what we were looking for and went to barnes and nobles to try our luck, they were fantastic. They sat down in some adirondack chairs and read books for at least an hour if not more. I took some pics of course. When we got home we brought some of the kids toys upstairs and they were ecstatic. They put on their PJs and brushed their teeth like little angels and even Kaylee didn't come out of her bed once. All because of the new chart. Of course we hope this behavior continues.
Tomorrow we are going to go to a new daycare place for Kaylee. I had learned of this place from a co-worker a couple of months ago, but never called. It sounds like a really terrific place that is going to offer quite a bit more stimulation for Kaylee then her current place. They do so many things and they kind of run it like a preschool, yet it's not much more expensive then what we're paying right now. So wish us luck and pray it's as good as it sounds.
5/30/2010 Wow what a weekend so far. The weather has been killer, couldn't ask for a better memorial weekend. Friday we went to the beach in Grand Haven. The kids are getting so much easier to handle on the beach. They played soccer, built a castle, ran around and we didn't have to watch them like a hawk the whole time. At night we hung out with some friends that we're contemplating camping with in July. It's up in the air still, but we would really love to. If we're not going with them, we're definitely going to try to go ourselves. Saturday, we cleared most of the leaves from the yard. I feel pretty useless, because there are so many things I can't help with. Anyway, we decided to resod part of the yard and bought sod and put that in. At night we just relaxed, Dan's back is really sore and he's been so exhausted. We've all still been really exhausted. Dan is almost done with school, only 19 more days starting tomorrow. He only mentions it about six times a day. I can't blame him.
Ryan is pretty funny now. He's making up his own superheroes. Dan is Deathkicker and Ryan is Supersqueezer. He is obsessed with Star Wars now, everything is a bad guy and guess who comes to the rescue... Darth Vader! I got a call on Thursday afternoon that Ryan had a rash on his back and that I had to go pick him up. Of course he has to go to the doctor otherwise he can't go back to school in case he's contagious. It was just heatrash and we wasted a copay on it. If it had to happen, this year is the best I suppose because we're going to max out our co-pay with the baby coming anyway. He's fine.
Kaylee is getting to the funny words phase. She says things like: Bawerina (ballerina), Doo-oh-dooh (cock-a-doodle-doo which is a chicken in her mind), Butt (this can be a butt, or it's a button, this can cause some confusion at times). She is obsessed with splashing water, to Ryan's and really our displeasure too. She is really starting to reason things out and learning new things everyday, except listening to us of course. Boy is that girl hard of hearing.
Both kids are incredibly energetic. I think partially cause they are still tired and partially because it's just so darn humid outside. We're not complaining though. We've pretty much lived outside for the past couple of days. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain and thunder, although I hope it happens later in the afternoon as opposed to tomorrow. I don't feel like going back to work at all, but at least it's a short week.
I'm still uploading pictures of Portugal. It's slow going, there are obviously a lot of pictures and I'm having some problems here and there.
Dan and I are eager to find out what we're having. I think we're leaning toward a boy ourselves, although of course it really doesn't matter. Hope all of you are enjoying Memorial Weekend. We certainly are, as busy as we are.
5/23/2010 It was a beautiful day today and we enjoyed it thoroughly. We've all been suffering from jetlag this week. The kids have woken me up at 4am every single morning. I went to bed at 6:30 / 7 o'clock at night and still managed to be absolutely exhausted most of the day. Today we've got the first signs of us getting over it.
My doctor's visit went really well last Wednesday. I got "yelled at" for not gaining any weight yet. So I'm supposed to gain four pounds by the next visit. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to accomplish it. I'm eating everything I want. I don't have the bottomless pit for a stomach that I had with Ryan and Kaylee and I just can't eat as much, both during meals and snacks. Plus I'm doing a lot more excercise. I'm feeling good and my stomach is growing steadily so I'm not too concerned about it. I'm not eating myself sick to just gain weight. I'm really excited that we'll find out the sex of the baby on June 16th. Can't wait. Once we know we're gonna think of baby names and start buying stuff, decorate the babyroom, etc... We'll of course post right away what it's gonna be. No more UBNN starting June 16th.
5/18/2010 We are back home! It's a miracle. When we left we were delayed in Grand Rapids first flight. Not a good start of the journey. The captain came on over the speaker and told us that we didn't have an onboard APU or something. It's the machine that starts the engine. No big deal, they just need a portable one to fire the engines and all is well. They tried it and some hose busted. Captain comes on again and says that he doesn't trust it and wants to have a mechanic check it out before taking off. Now for normal people, such as Dan and his parents these kind of things are not a problem. For someone who is uncomfortable flying this doesn't add to a pleasant flying experience. We finally take off and once we're in the air turbulance starts. It was bad, we literally dropped a good 100 feet or so. Every one on the plane just kind of laughed and giggled about it. Well not everybody. I for one was digging my nails into the seat in front of me, at the same time not trying to freak out the kids and laughing and pretending all is well. I should've become an actress. I tell you that flight took about ten years of my life. When we got to Detroit, and yes I nearly kissed the ground once we landed, the first announcement was that our flight was delayed, because the volcano was spewing more ash in the air, but all went pretty well, even though we arrived about two hours late. They just flew around the ash.
The stay in the hotel in Schiphol was a hoot. It is an awesome hotel, absolutely gorgeous. We got a huge discount on hotels.com. Still it was a little more expensive because it's at the airport. The hotel has a restaurant with a top chef...right expensive. Of course we preferred to get some take out after our long trip and the hotel was nice enough to provide is with a list of restaurants that offer take-out...., but there we no phone numbers, no menus, and no yellow pages, and no free wi-fi, which I really thought was kind of silly considering what an upscale hotel it is. So we ordered lunch from the restaurant, it was EXPENSIVE. Granted we did roomservice, so it adds to it.
Our flight to Faro, Portugal itself was uneventful, except that the seats were very small and it was an ice chest. We met up with Remco, Karin, Saskia, Dennis and their kids in A'dam and flew with them. It was so great to see everybody again. After our arrival in Faro, we picked up our rental cars and they didn't have the car Dan and I reserved. They only had something smaller. So we had to put luggage in with Jan and Karl and drove our little Volkswagen Polo (kind of like a Volkswagen Golf). Dan felt like one of the cars in the Italian Job, especially with the winding roads and sharp turns. Nice little car, that we ended up really liking.
Our little appartment was awesome. Tile floors, white walls, two bedrooms, a patio connected to a grass lawn. The beds in Portugal are apparently made of concrete and that is really the only 'complaint' we have about the place. After two days of sleeping on the beds, my sides were literally bruised and in pain. I added blankets and folded a throw to make it more bareable. The little kitchen comes with all the dishes, silverware, pots and pans you need. We quickly made a run to the store and bought ourselves some goodies. We arrived early so we got to relax and enjoy the sun.
The first two days the kids weren't too excited about being in Portugal. Ryan kept saying he wanted to go home. I think it's his way of dealing with a scary situation. We had prepared the kids for the trip, but not for the actual stay. Learning process for next time. They never actually went on vacation before, not like this and was a totally new experience for them. After two days they were fine and they got used to the routine. My parents didn't arrive until late the day we arrived and we ended up getting together the next day. Each family had their own appartment and it was so great to be able to drop by or walk passed and wave or chit chat. Especially for Dan, me and the kids who live so far away from family it was really great and we are sure going to miss that. We had lunch together on the lawn. Jan and Karl had an appartment upstairs with a spectaculair view of the ocean. Very cool. We ended up doing some of our sight seeing together, but we found out quickly that it's hard to organize that with sixteen people, who have kids that are on different schedules. So in the morning people would indicate what they would do and anybody who wanted to come was welcome. That worked better.
We invited all families over for dinner on seperate evenings, which again for Dan and me is something unusual, and we enjoyed immensly. It was so great to have everybody in the same spot. The kids loved having both Gmas and Gpas together. They finally get it. They have two omas and two opas. I am not going to tell about all the things we did. I have over two hundred pics, and am waiting for the pics from everyone else, then I'll post pics with comments on our expeditions and such.
The trip back home was pretty helacious. The flight from Faro was a doozy, but the flight was at 8 at night and we arrived in A'dam after twelve. It kind of messed up our next day. We went on a canal tour, but the kids acted up and Dan and I took them back to the hotel and let Jan and Karl go to the Anne Frank Museum by themselves. We spent the evening in our room and slept till 3:45am when we got up to go the airport for our flight back to the US. When we arrived we found out all flights were on hold. Schiphol airspace was closed due to volcanic ash. At six am we would find out more about whether they would resume flying or not. They didn't. Our flight was delayed till two o'clock. Now imagine waiting from 5am till 2pm at the airport with two kids 2 and 4. We couldn't check in our luggage so were stuck at the check in area where there was no food, limited chairs, and you can't go anywhere because of the kids and the luggage. We found four chairs, that we desperately defended against others who wanted to sit. The kids slept on the floor a while, played, ran around. Generally they were really really good. At two our flight was canceled and Dan and Karl had to go stand in line to book a new flight. We just never thought that we would fly that day, but we did. Dan and Karl had to stand in line for two and a half hours to make it happen, but they booked us on a 4:30pm flight that day. Then they had to stand in line to drop off our luggage. During that time Jan and I entertained the kids, fed them snacks, and had many many bathroom breaks (never at the same time). We finally went through security and attacked McDonalds. We then headed for our gate. At 6pm our flight finally took off and we arrived in Detroit at 9pm. We then had to stand in line again for immigration and then to find out about our connecting flight. We stayed over in Detroit that night and it wasn't until midnight that we got into our hotel rooms. The kids were sleeping and we just crawled in without doing anything else. Kaylee woke all of us at 4am and the fun started again. The good thing about the 4am wake up was that we were able to say goodbye to Gma and Gpa who were able to book a flight straight to Fort Myers instead of flying to Grand Rapids with us first. Dan and my flight left at nine. The kids were horrible in the plane. Finally tired and fed up with all the walking around and waiting and flying. We arrived in GR today at 10:30am and I can say with total honesty that I'm not going to be too eager to fly anytime soon. Good thing I can't since I'm prego anyway.
I'm totally exhausted and wish I could crawl in bed, but I fear if I do that I won't sleep tonight. Tomorrow it's back to work, so I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed. Now all we want to do is sit down, look at all the pictures we took and remember the fun parts about being in Portugal. I will post pictures as I can/feel like it.
5/2/2010 What a day! Things started out pretty good. The kids let us sleep in till 7:30am. Dan made some croissants and ate breakfast. We put the kids in front of a movie so we could pack our suitcase. We already finished the kids yesterday. It went good for a while, but it took us some time. We are weight limited for our flight in Europe and so we had to do some creative thinking. Half way through the kids wanted to come hang out with us and of course they touch everything. Then we had to print some last important documents and yes, you probably see this coming, the printer didn't work. Couldn't make it work. Part of the problem was an empty cartridge. So Dan went to Staples and printed the documents and after he came back with a cartridge I figured out we printed the wrong documents, so we tried to make the printer work again and actually figured out that it was a bad cable. Then we actually had some relaxation and played outside. Dan made dinner. Yummy porkchops. Of course this is when chaos errupted again. Kaylee touched the hot dishes from the oven after already burning herself and numerous warnings from both Dan, me and Ryan that it they are HOT. So she cried and that ended dinner for her pretty much. While this all happened Sumer came to pick up Rogue, who when she saw Sumer, instantly peed on the floor. We're not sure what that is all about. Kaylee just went over the top balistic when Rogue left. Crying her heart out about "my dog" and "Rogue don't leave". So then dinner for Kaylee was REALLY over. They are currently quiet and we are nursing our headaches and trying to do the last things to get ready for Portugal.
Gma and Gpa are currently in Atlanta waiting for their flight to GR. We won't see them till tomorrow, because they arrive at 10:30pm. The kids are sooo excited, hence their high level of energy no doubt. We're ready for that vacation now. Portugal here we come!
4/30/2010 Thank you everybody for the vacation wishes. I'm sure we'll have a great time!
4/28/2010 HARTELIJK GEFILICITEERD SASKIA!
So Ryan announced today at school that I'm pregnant. Apparently he was sitting at lunch when miss Vicky came in and he just said: " Miss Vicky, mommy has a baby in her tummy." I guess they already suspected it, because I'm "glowing". I think they are just seeing the glow of my greasy skin. I'm breaking out like I'm a teenager.
Two more days and then it's weekend. Then I have 17 days off in a row. We found a solution to our expensive cat kenneling problem. It was going to cost us $600, but we found a petsitter and now it'll only be $100. Luckily she comes highly recommended and she has petsat for some of my friend. She is actually Riley's mom's best friend. Riley is the blond dog that is Rogue's best friend. That is where Rogue is going to be staying at again.
We seem to be having a bit of a lucky streak here. It kind of makes us nervous and we're wondering what big thing is going to go wrong. Nice and positive huh?
Portugal really comes very close now and I can't believe I'm going to be seeing everybody on Tuesday morning.
4/26/2010 Seven more days and then we're leaving. Getting nervous. I just hate flying. You would think by now somebody would've come up with a faster mode of transport then flying. Yes, I'm talking "Scotty beam me up". If that were the case I'd go visit my mom for lunch. Anyway, so Portugal. It's coming and I'm hoping it's going to be relaxing and exciting and fun. The kids are super excited. They ask us every day if we can go to Portugal. I showed them pictures, we talked about being good in the plane, about how many plane rides we have to take. They can't wait to be with Oma, Opa, Gma and Gpa. I don't think they have good concept of what to expect, especially Kaylee, but they are enthusiastic.
4/21/2010 I didn't realize it, but I'm already in my second trimester since last Sunday. I thought it was this weekend. Woohoo! I feel like I'm getting places now.
4/20/2010 I have not been feeling very well and took the past two days off from work. Unfortunately someone got let go again while I was gone. It's just really depressing. Yesterday we went for a walk/ bike ride with the kids. Rogue's leash got wrapped around Ryan's neck and he's got some pretty nasty looking wounds. Dan was holding the leash and we saw it happening so we got to it right away, but not fast enough to prevent two ugly burns. He was REALLY good. He didn't cry, didn't complain. He wasn't angry with Rogue for being a spass and didn't ask to go home. Even though his helmet strap brushed up against the wounds for the rest of the ride, he didn't cry, and didn't ask to go home, or didn't ask for his helmet to come off.
Today I was home too. I felt a whole lot better and decided to go take my EKG test that I was supposed to do last month. I didn't think they would see anything, but low and behold I have quadrogemini (an extra heart beat every four beats). They probably can't do much, but they will check my thyroid I'm sure. If there's nothing wrong with my thyroid I will probably just have to live with it. Palpatations don't hurt, but they can be annoying.
Only a week and a half before the Opp's (includes GMA and GPA) are going to Portugal. Let's pray the iceland volcano doesn't put ash in the air anymore or if it does it it needs to blow in whichever way it doesn't interfere with our trip.
4/17/2010 Well today was not my favorite day in the universe. Not sure what's up with the kids, but they were quite challenging today. Especially Kaylee was pretty difficultl. I have never seen them like this, no matter what we did they were clinging, whining and crying and just generally bad. For some reason they wouldn't play by themselves at all. I half expect both to have a fever tomorrow. It was weird too, because the morning started out so good. They let us sleep till 7. I guess that could've been another sign that something is up. I just pray tomorrow they are over it, whatever it is.On a happy note I'm 13 weeks today. I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere. During the kids nap I went to the store and bought a bunch of nice maternity clothes. I'm excited about and wish I had done that when I was prego with Ryan and Kaylee. I was trying to save money and all.
4/16/2010 Did you know that people on the ambulance carry swords and that they fight sharks and bears? (The world according to Ryan)
4/15/2010 Got our flight details for the trip to Portugal. We already have everything set for US to Amsterdam, but we still needed the final flight times for Amsterdam to Portugal. The times are horrible for the kids. Way early in the morning and way late at night. We're going to be flying with our family, gma and gpa, my sister and her family and my brother and their family. Depending on the size of the plane, we're going to take up most of it. With six kids between the ages of 2 and 5...That ought to be an interesting flight. Nice to all fly together.
4/14/2010 I went to the OB again today. First doppler and of course she couldn't find the heartbeat. Well at least not right away. When she did find it, it was loud and clear. Very nice. I'm feeling much better, but I'm unbelievably hungry all the time. I'm trying to be healthy and not eat too much or unhealthy. I'm walking everyday if possible. I'm doing it during lunch so if I have to go to the dr. I don't walk. Still very tired at night, but feeling much better.
The kids are doing well. Kaylee is learning new things. Slowly but surely :-). She still doesn't always listen or in other words, she completely ignores you until you set her straight. Ryan is learning to write. He is so excited about it. He's also learning to sing more songs and do math and well pretty much everything.
4/10/2010 Oops forgot to change the website after Easter. Nothing really exciting has happened here. The most exciting thing we did this week is take Kaylee to the hairdresser. I just had them take a little over an inch off and straighten her bangs. Her hair looked kind of out of control, besides it's good for hair to be cut once in a while and we sure haven't cut her hair in over a year or so, maybe even more. Next week the most exciting thing will be for me to go to my dr's appt. I'm sure I'll be there a complete 5 minutes. Oh I went to see my friend's baby this week. His name is Cameron and he is so stinking cute. Adorable. Between him and Logan, I wish I was further ahead and holding our baby in my arms. On the flip side I really want to enjoy this last pregnancy, because it is without a doubt our last one.
4/4/2010 HAPPY EASTER! We kind of cheated... We did our Easter egg hunt yesterday. It was mostly because of the weather. I really wanted to do egg hunting outside and it was great fun. We sat down for breakfast and ate some of Dan's Easter bread and then I slipped out hide the eggs. Ryan of course found them really quick. Kaylee saw one wanted to open it and all that sort of stuff. When we told Ryan to slow down he helped Kaylee find more eggs. He can be so sweet. After that we came back in and they got to have their Easter bags. I got some little toys this time. Not so for the candy thing. Of course they got a chocolate bunny, which Kaylee pretty much ate immediately. They like their toys, especially the paddle ball, which Kaylee knotted up by afternoon. They had fun though. I was so exhausted by then, I decided to take a nap. Three hours later, I woke up refreshed, but by evening I was exhausted again. It doesn't help that they both wake up in the middle of the night, either for a bathroom break, or they are scared or whatever. They are having fun today too though. We decorated sunvisors, played with potato (play-doh) and they were playing outside, but now they are sitting at the table eating a snack. It's only 48 degrees out. It's supposed to get warmer this afternoon, so hopefully we can spend the day outside.
3/31/2010 Yay, so excited about my new nephew. Congrats Kim and Sean on the birth of Logan. It makes me wish I was further along. Seriously it's crawling this time. With Kaylee it went so fast, one day I was four weeks along, next day she was born, or so it seemed. I have to say I forgot how hard it can be to take care of a child while you're pregnant. Now it's not one, but two. Yesterday the kids must have sensed how tired I was and as a result bedtime wasn't fantastic. I took my time today and put the kids in bed at their old time, of course they are still wide awake, but it gives me some piece and quiet when I really need it. I am trying to do a lot of walking this time. During lunchtime is really the only time I have, but lately I've been so tired I've considered skipping and just taking a nap instead. Friday I'm off and Dan will be home. We're sending the kids to school/daycare and just enjoy the day together. We need it. We're gonna do some shopping and if time permits we're going to the movies. We're not sure if that'll work because Dan has to work until 7:30am on Friday. He's gonna see if he can get out early. If they have too many people they will ask if people want to go home early. It would be nice if we could spend a day together without the kids.
3/29/2010 Sunday we finished Ryan's room. The room looks awesome if I do say so myself. We called it Ryan's cave, instead of the batcave. He liked that, but when night time came he was scared and didn't want to sleep with spiderman on his walls. I had put him Spiderman swinging from the sophet, sitting on top of the door frame, swinging from underneath a window and various poses like that. It was nice, so at night I took them down. They are now on the end of his bed where he can't see them when he sleeps. Tonight it was another struggle to get him to go to bed. He wanted to sleep downstairs in our room. He changed his mind rather quickly when Dan went to put him to bed there. Yeah, that room is far scarier then his own. It took all my powers of persuasion to have him like the room by the time he fell asleep. I feel like I won a battle. You can do that to Ryan, he'll listen to reason. Kaylee is WAY to stubborn for simple psychology like that. Not sure how I would solve that problem with her. She threw her first major tantrum this weekend. It was all because she was too stubborn to eat a snack when she needed one. So I gave it to Ryan. Big mistake. It took me half an hour to calm her down. Like I said, stubborn as all get up. I'm afraid she probably got that from me.
3/27/2010 Working on Ryan's new room today. We went to Menards and he got to 'pick' the color of the paint. We just offered him some color cards and he could choose from those. He was pretty adament though. He also got to choose his wall appliques. He wanted Batman, but they didn't have him, so it's Spiderman instead. This boy is completely obsessed with Spiderman and Batman. He likes superheroes in general, but those two top everything. Dan actually started the painting. I helped a little, but I get so exhausted so quick, plus if we both work on the room the kids insist on being there and that gets hard. So kudos to Dan for doing most of the work. I don't complain about the tiredness, because it's all part of it, but I at the same time it means more work for Dan.
So this week is going to be exciting. I'm awaiting two newborns today. Both due dates were on the same day and induction is scheduled for the same day. Both boys too. A lot of other similarities as well.
3/25/2010 Just came back from the U/S. Everything looks good. Heartbeat at 181pm. I was sooo excited to see him/her. His heart beating. He was waving at us. I was all worried for nothing. "I told you didn't I", Dan said as we walked out. Yes he did. UBNN waved at us and I have some pictures from the U/S that I'll put up when I get home.
3/24/2010 I was not planning to write anything, just clean up a little, well I was a little too happy cleaning. Cleared off the entire page. Tomorrow is the U/S, so that is pretty exciting. If all is well i'll be posting some U/S pics up. I'm extremely tired today. I wanted to go to bed at 5:30 when i came home, but the kids haven't learned to put themselves to bed yet. Hahaha. Like I'd miss their bedtime routine. Although tonight I could've done without Kaylee's. I'll give an update tomorrow!
3/21/2010 Finding Nemo was a success. The kids had so much fun. Just look at the pictures they are cute. Ryan brought his own camera so maybe I'll post some pics he took. Just remember that all pics and video are made with a bouncing Kaylee on my lap.
3/20/2010 Almost time to go see Disney on Ice: Finding Nemo. The kiddies went to bed late and we hoped they would sleep in, but no such luck. I took Kaylee with me to the vet for Caspar's follow up visit and he's doing well, but his liver values are very high. He's not diabetic yet, so the doc is going to ease off his steroids. He's really doing very well on them. Next month he's got to go back. I have learned that the cats will have to be boarded when we go to Portugal. Caspar will always have to take steroids. He lost 3/4 of a pound in weight in one month. Of course he's more active, but it's shocker to me. Cats don't lose weight very easily. It's one of the things that is so difficult with having obese cats. So when I was waiting for them to bring Caspy back out, Kaylee was playing in the children's area and all of a sudden she walks out with her pants soaking wet. She has been really bad these last few days with peeing and pooping in her pants. Not sure what is going on there. I wish she could talk and tell us. It might have something to do with how tired Dan and I are. I think Dan has sympathy symptoms. He has been more tired then I have. He is currently also taking a nap on the couch though. Anyway, so she peed in her pants, I had nothing with me, so I had to let her walk around in wet clothes. Kind of embarrassing, but at least it was at the end of the appointment. Of course she was wearing her brand spanking new shoes that we only just bought yesterday and of course she peed on those as well. So we're going to go back to the telling her to let us know if she needs to go potty every two seconds.
3/19/2010 We're going to see Disney on Ice Finding Nemo tomorrow. It's kind of last minute and I really hope the kids will like it. They were kind of difficult today, but I'm praying they will be better tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm also taking Caspar to the vet to see if he's diabetic. He looks really good, didn't lose any weight. I don't think he gained any either. Not sure what to expect from this visit. I hope we won't have to board the cats when we go to Portugal. We'll find out tomorrow. If Caspar is diabetic, we'll have to house him, because he'll need meds. Hope for the best.
3/17/2010 So I went to my first OB visit. So much anticipation when nothing really happens. Everything looks goood... that's about all they can say. I'm having my first U/S next week thrusday. I also have to go in for an EKG because of the billions of heartpalpatations I have been getting since I'm prego. I'm sure when I have the EKG my heart will be normal. isn't that always how these things work? Had a bit of ascare this morning. I almost or actually I think I did pass out while taking a shower. I felt myself getting light headed so I sat down and put my head between my knees, but however long later I "woke up". I don't know how long it was, maybe a second, could've been a minute. The water was still warm so it couldn't have been that long. It kind of scared me. Perfect timing fo rit though, since I went to see the doc today anyway. They think it was probably low blood sugar. I have been feeling awful all day long. My BP was fine so that wasn't it. I worry about things too much so I tried to put it out of my mind. Next week during the U/S we'll see that either everything is fine or it's not. I have been soooo tired lately. It is so hard to stay awake at work, especially during the afternoon. it was very bsy on top of that, so I'm pooped. Luckily the weather is warm and the kids keep themselves occupied outside.
3/16/2010 The last couple of days have not been so wonderful. Two people have been fired at the office. Of course it's all a secret and there are no announcements. One of them is a good friend of mine. She's okay, but it isn't for the company. She's in purchasing, the department that is bleeding knowledge. Who has to train the successor. Yep... me! There is something wrong with this logic. On a happier note, tomorrow will be my first doctor's appointment. It'll not be very exciting, unless they schedule a U/S, which they usually do for me since I've had a miscarriage, although I think it's getting to be more standard to get a U/S early on. I'm still very exhausted, but the nausea seems to be going away. Hooray. I'm still not fond of food, but I don't seem to have lost any weight. Really I don't know that for sure, but my stomach is big enough, so I don't think I did lose anything. I am still very tired. The house hold has been suffering. I go to bed at about 9 o'clock every night. I have to stay up now though, because I have to let Kaylee go potty before I go to bed, otherwise she wakes up to go potty and never falls back to sleep again or so it seems.
The past couple of days have been really nice out and it's become somewhat of a ritual to go for a bikeride with the kids. They are both besotted with their bikes. It's fun to see. Today it was nearly 70 here, the sun was shining. Unbelievable. This weekend? It's gonna snow with accumulation. It's a cruel cruel world. 0
3/10/2010 When I took Ryan to bed tonight he said: "Mom can I tell you something?" Of course I said yes. "Oma made me a cake with a monkey on it. You want to come to my house?" To which I replied that we were at his house. "No, MY house." He said emphasizing the word 'my'. "Where is your house?" I asked, playing his little game. "You go passed my school and then you turn right and I see my house." His little brain is working overtime coming up with this story. "Then when you get to my house you go inside and...and...and...guess what?" The look on his face was one of high anticipation. "Can you guess what mama?" Naturally I had no idea what he was trying to tell me. So I replied with a "I don't know honey?" "There's a cake...with Batman on it." "What happened to the cake oma made with the monkey on it?" I asked. "We ate it mommy. I made three and I put one away so we can save it for later." We continued this line of talking for a while. We talked about decorating the baby room with monkeys and his bunkbed, but then I told him it was time to sleep, so we said our goodnights and I left his room. Five seconds later he calls me: "Mommy you have to come!" "Why?" I call to him thinking to myself this is going to be a long night. "What's the matter?" "Mommy, the cupboard just opened. I saw it with my two eyes." He referred to his underwear drawer. It has been open since this morning when he grabbed clean underwear, but apparently he thinks it opened while he lay there in bed. I love how creative his mind is. So full of stories and imagination. He makes up his own stories all the time, also at school. He got a sticker for a transportation story that he told at circle time.
3/8/2010 I put up some pictures of the last couple of weeks. Some silly some funny. We had a great night tonight with the kiddos. We went for a bike ride. Ryan didn't want to ride his bike he had a hard time with it. Dan jacked up Ryan's seat and all of a sudden it was a breeze. Didn't know he had grown so much. The seat is at its highest, so come next year he probably needs a new bike. Ryan had this giant smile on his face when he was riding. Kaylee really rode her bike for the first time yesterday. She had a hard time peddling and steering at the same time, but today she had it down pat. The whole time while we're riding Kaylee just said "Go Kaylee, Go Kaylee, you can do it". Too cute. Well the weather forecast for the next ten days is all above freezing. Woohoo... spring here we come.
3/7/2010 Dinner was great! We'll definitely do that again. Hope it's gonna be another beautiful day today. Came across the below article. Ryan and Kaylee are so out of luck. Unborn-baby-no-name has more luck...I'm sick a lot (just not throwing up...thank you lord!)
Morning sickness linked to smarter babies
Thu, Apr 23, 2009 (HealthDay News) -- Children born to mothers who have morning sickness may be smarter than those whose moms don't have nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, suggests a new study.
Researchers found that the children of mothers with morning sickness scored higher on tests designed to assess children's IQ and mental acuity, theCanadian Press reported.
But while this difference was statistically significant, it doesn't mean that children born to mothers who didn't have nausea during pregnancy are developmentally slow, said senior author Dr. Gideon Koren, director of the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. It's just that the other children scored higher on the tests.
The study appears in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Nausea has long been recognized as a sign of a healthy pregnancy, according to the CP. Pregnant women who have morning sickness are less likely to have a miscarriage and less likely to have babies with congenital cardiovascular problems.
3/6/2010 What a busy day. We went to the ZOO in the morning. It was a lovely day. It's still cold and we have snow on the ground, but the sun was shining full blast. Then we went home, we all (except Dan) took a nap and when we woke up we went for a bike ride. Well the kids did, even Rogue got to go out and then we played on the drive while Dan worked on the new garage door opener. I'm glad I married a man who's not afraid to tackle some projects. It saves money you know. Anyway, the kids ate dinner and we.... are getting Red Lobster take out. After that we're going to watch a move...the hangover I think. We forgot to call a babysitter this weekend so we could go out, but when we thought about it, we figured why spend all the money. The babysitter will be here when the kids are sleeping. It'll take about $100 for us to go out to eat, watch a movie and pay the babysitter. If we stay home we can get an extra fancy dinner and watch a movie in our "theatre". We don't have to worry about when to go home. The kids are sleeping anyway and we can still go to bed in time so we can be up at the crack of dawn with the kids. I still say that if I want a babysitter, I want one that comes in at 6am and takes care of the kids while we sleep. Then we can stay up as late as we want, but I digress. Dan is picking up dinner as I speak...well...write I guess technically. All the kids have to do is not wake up. :-)
 Spring is in the air... 
3/5/2010 I've been experiencing some difficulty getting Kaylee to bed. At this point I'm just frustrated. I know I have less patience because I'm so tired, nauseaus etc... around eight o'clock it's just too much too deal with. Sometimes she is scared she says, but she has a light in her room, the door is open and a light is on in the hallway. We're practically right outside her door. I told her if she needs us she can talk in the monitor. It's been maybe three or four days that she's been doing it and on top of the last week where she was sick and I only slept a few hours each night, it's just really getting aggravating. After an aggravating hour of getting her back in bed we are now finally sitting on the couch relaxing. It's been a difficult two weeks for both Dan and me. Dan worked his proverbial a** off. He worked a ton of overtime, and I had to deal with being awake several times a night with the kiddies. I just hope next week is a little less stressfull. On a happy note, today I'm seven weeks prego. I still think it's moving along so slow. The kids are really excited about having a baby. I tell them all the time I have a baby in my tummy. Ryan says funny things like "when I have a baby in my tummy, I will put on my cape and I'm batman." They know what they want though. Ryan wants a brother. Kaylee wants a sister. I'm afraid we can only oblige one of them
3/4/2010 It's been beautiful here the past several days. It's still around freezing and in the morning it's pretty frosty, but once the sun comes up it feels like spring is in the air. I hope it is the case. We still have snow on the ground. It'll take quite a few sunny days to get rid of it. The kids are enjoying the warmth and are playing outside. Kaylee is trying to climb a tree and build a snowman. Ryan is just happy running around.
3/3/2010 I'm sooooo tired. I am supposed to exercise tonight, but my eyes are hurting, my stomach is in turmoil, and I think I'm just going to sleep. It's not even eight o'clock. Ryan asked me if I was going to exercise. I said that I was too tired and would probably go to sleep instead. "Just dream about exercise mommy." He replied. What a smart little kid :-). My prego symptoms seem a lot worse this time around, especially the last couple of days. I wouldn't be surprised if the word morning sickness is going to mean more then just nausea one of these days. I find it hard to eat anything. It's not that I don't like it, it's more that it gives me heartburn.
We may be going to the ZOO this weekend. It's a little early, but it's supposed to be a lovely day. We've actually been having quite nice weather for the past couple of days. The sun is shining. It feels like spring is coming, which it probably isn't because it's way to early for it. Well, I'm off to bed. I can't take it anymore.
2/28/2010 I just found Kaylee in the cats room trying to give the cats food. She poored water on it as well. Of course it went all over the floor, both the water and the catfood. Sigh. I felt bad about putting her on a timeout, but she's got to learn to listen. She must be growing, because there is no end to her desire for food. After the catfood incident she tried to get cereal herself, and I just found her trying to eat peanut butter straight out of the jar. So much for trying to clean up the mess she made with the cats. Oh all this time, she has a sandwich sitting out there waiting for her. It's not like we're starving her you know. It's been a weird weekend. Dan and I are really tired, for different reasons, so we're kind of lounging. I had a really fun morning with the kids. We did puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, for like three hours. Yesterday we did arts and crafts which was really fun too.
2/25/2010 Hartelijk gefeliciteerd pap! Ik hoop dat je een gezellige verjaardag hebt gehad. It's been a looooonnnnggg week. I have been very tired as can be expected. So tired that while I'm doing aerobics I nearly fall asleep. Of course I'm doing it at eight at night since that is the only time I have, which also happens to be the time I'm most exhausted. Six weeks tomorrow. Time is crawling. Got a lot of heartburn this time around. Didn't have it with Kaylee and Ryan. So far the pregnancy started out a lot like Kaylee's, does that mean another girl? I'm not like those women that have these dreams and know what their kids are or if I do have them I don't remember my dreams. The kids have been doing really well. They love playing batman and robin. I knew there was a good reason we got all those blankets when the kids were born. They make excellent capes. They like to get captured by us and then they rescue each other. They were pretending to fall down the stairs the other day. All that means is they were scooting down the last few steps of the stairs. It was Kaylee's turn and she made the appropriate "Oh no" noises. Ryan helped by grabbing Kaylee's hair and pulling really hard to get her back up the stairs. So far Dan staying home with Ryan is going really well. On top of saving money they are doing some bonding that I think they really needed. It's great to see them having so much fun.
2/22/2010 I'm still getting used to being prego again. It's kind of surreal even though we planned it. I'm very curious to find out what we're having. I just read today that they now have blood test that can tell the sex of the baby before 12 weeks. Isn't that just crazy. It'll probably never become covered by insurance because it's not a medical necessity, but it's kind of cool that it's possible to do something like that. The baby room is going to be Dan and my old room upstairs. We already put all the baby toys we saved in the room. Now we're starting to refer to it as the babyroom to get the kids to learn that is where they brother/sister is going to sleep. The room is already a great color: yellow. Good for a boy or a girl. I'm thinking either jungle theme or underwater. Both appeal to me and both can be used for a girl or a boy.
2/20/2010 Today we had the babyshower. Phew...glad it's over, but I think it was a success. It was a little chaotic. The friend I did this with had her grandson with her this weekend and she couldn't help me. He is a little cranky. So it was all me and Kaylee burnt her hand on the crockpot while she was sitting on my lap. That's what you get when your attention is divided. We had six kids in total and they completely redid the basement. It has literaly never been this messy with toys ever. Kaylee was in a bad mood as it was, so she wanted nothing to do with Dan. The games went well and the gifts were great. Everybody said they enjoyed it and the food. Now we're just chilling, watching some olympics. Kaylee loves the figure skating. The fire is on...and it's just really relaxing. Something that is really nice after such a hectic crazy day.
2/17/2010 I went to the hospital today for my first blood test. My first appt isn't until March 17th. It's seems a lifetime away. Already impatient. Wish the first trimester was over with. Just found out that two teachers at Ryan's school are pregnant too. Imagine that you lose two teachers at the same time. Yikes. Ryan's teacher is one of the ones who is pregnant so he may get another teacher soon. They are actively looking.
2/13/2010 Happy Valentines weekend! I had a rough week. Caspar has been acting weird so when I finally took the time to get up close and see what was going on I noticed that he has been losing hair. He has such a thick coat that if you're not paying attention you don't see it. Well, it warranted a visit to the vet and she told me that he probably has an auto immune disease. So they did blood work, which came back normal and now they have biopsied his skin and sent it to pathology. The vet still thinks he's got an autoimmune disease or he has a severe food allergy (I changed their food 2-3 weeks ago). He also has an infection so he got antibiotics and he's already acting better. It looks kind of gross though and we're going to put both cats in one room of the house for a while, also because next week we have a babyshower at our house. My friend is due April 5th and this is her first. We're so excited for her. There should be about twenty people, and some of them have allergies. So this is vacuum weekend, no more cats and then let the dandruff settle. It should be good for a couple of hours.
2/10/2010 The kids are getting used to us sleeping downstairs. I taught Ryan that if he needs me all he has to do is speak in the monitor and I'll be there as soon as I can. Dan reminded him that we were sleeping downstairs and that if he needed us, he should come downstairs and get us.
Ryan: "No daddy! I can just say: "Mommy I'm scared and I'm going potty." and mommy will come up."
I told Ryan tonight that I was tired.
Ryan: "I know what tired is."
Dan and I: "What is it?"
Ryan: "It's when you go to bed and you sleep really deep and then you have an upset tummy and I call daddy. Then stuff come out of my tummy and the carpet is yucky."
I put up some pictures from January... the Winter Gala Ryan had at his school. If I feel like it I will put the video up this weekend as well.
2/8/2010 It's been a busy weekend. Dan and I decided to move our bedroom downstairs. The main reason is that we've been sharing a bathroom with the four of us and it's getting harder and harder to keep it neat. The kids are now allowed in the bathroom since they have to go potty and sometimes they go by themselves and they try to grab things from the counter. So now we have our master bedroom downstairs. It is nice. The kids had to get used to it, but it's been two nights now and it's going pretty well, except for this morning when Kaylee didn't find me in bed to help her go potty, so she peed in the hallway on the floor. I guess we still have some things to work on. Moving things in the house is always good because it requires you to go through stuff and th]row things away. So we did a lot of cleaning and moving. Ryan was sick Saturday night. The same thing Kaylee and I had. Just one night of throwing up and diahrea, no fever or anything else. So now Dan's the only one who is left to get it. Unfortunately the sleeping in till 6:30-7:00 seems to be over.
2/3/2010 We've been visiting with a lot of our friends in the past couple of weekends. Of course the kids came along and they behaved so well. It is so nice now they are at this age and they are a little independent and can entertain themselves when we go somewhere. I now can honestly say that the age of a child I like least is 2-3, because they can get so difficult to deal with. Ryan was the worst, but if I think back on it his time was worse because we had Kaylee. Now you can reason with them and make them understand why we have to go or whatever is going on. Kaylee was sick yesterday, she seems to be better today, but she is still coughing. I'm a little tired of all the coughing this year. I feel like we have been coughing since November. Spring can't come soon enough, for more reasons then I'm done with Winter. Portugal is getting closer and we're really looking forward to it.
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